


Fire on Fire

by Kate_Shepard



Series: There's No Place Like Home [3]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:49:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26992429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Shepard/pseuds/Kate_Shepard
Summary: Commander Jake Shepard’s life had been defined by two things: survival and loss. Mindoir, Akuze, family, hope. Caring about something seemed to be equivalent to sentencing it to death. He'd spent years unsuccessfully trying to find his lost childhood sweetheart from Mindoir. Only after losing his fiance on Akuze and being rescued by a ghostly figment of his tortured mind did he give up. But when Cerberus brings the past roaring back to the present, can he recover some semblance of what was lost before it's too late or was he saved to do nothing more than defeat the Reapers and die alone?
Relationships: Male Shepard (Mass Effect)/Original Male Character(s)
Series: There's No Place Like Home [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709710
Comments: 45
Kudos: 13





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> This is the final installment of a story that's been dear to me for a long time. Jake is one of my two favorite OCs. He's been patient and forgiving as I've tormented him and put him through hell again and again. As have my (admittedly few given the niche nature of the story) readers. A special thank you to BardofHeartDive and JulesHawke for your feedback, love for Jake, and not letting me give up on it. Love you guys.

When you unfold me and tell me you love me and look in my eyes

You are perfection, my only direction

It’s fire on fire

-Fire on Fire by Sam Smith

* * *

Commander Jake Shepard’s life had been defined by two things: survival and loss. He had survived the batarian raid on his settlement of Felicity on Mindoir, but lost everyone he’d ever known. He’d survived the thresher maw attack on Akuze, but lost the one thing that had made life worth staying alive. He’d survived Saren and the attack on the Citadel, but lost two of his own crew. Now, though, while he’d lost his entire ship and at least half her crew, he’d finally found something he wouldn’t survive. 

He was grateful. Even as the air hissed from his suit. Even as the planet grew larger in his frosted visor. Even as his skin swelled and his body froze and burned and froze again, he was grateful. 

After all, he’d been trying to die since he was sixteen years old.

They called him a hero because he took the most dangerous missions, because they believed he was fearless, because he danced with death and begged it to take him. As his first fiancé, Johnny, would have said: they knew nothing, Jon Snow. He didn’t do what he did for love of Earth. He’d never loved that claustrophobic neon blue planet. 

Surviving there for a couple years didn’t make humanity’s homeworld any more home to him than Arcturus Station or Benning or the _SSV Tokyo_ or anywhere else he’d been stationed for more than six months. Home was Mindoir. Home was a pink sky and silver grass. Home was purple wheat and smooth trees with gold and crimson leaves. Home was desert and terraformed farmland and open space. 

Home was Johnny Shepard and the family who’d adopted him after he’d been taken from his abusive mother. Johnny with the silver-green eyes. Johnny, whose perfection was made up of narrow saves. Johnny, who’d accepted him when few others were willing to. Johnny, who’d loved him when no one else had. His first kiss, first love, first everything. Johnny, for whom he’d tattooed the Star Trek symbol over the heart the boy never stopped owning. Jake didn’t even like Star Trek. He still didn’t like it. But Johnny did, and he still loved Johnny. 

When Johnny was ripped away from him on that nightmare day the world ended, he thought he’d never love again. Not until he found him. But he never had. He’d searched far and wide, devoted his life to finding and saving him. He’d vanished without a trace. If Jake was the only one in the entire galaxy who remembered him and Jake died, then had he ever really existed? 

For a few years after the raid, home had been Seth Hayworth, the son of the people who’d fostered him after the raid. Seth, the giant with golden hair to his shoulders. The biker dude. The teddy bear. The one who’d pulled him from the abyss time and time again. The one who’d always been patient with him. The one who’d loved him even when he was nothing but broken pieces and jagged edges.

Seth, for whom everything was a celebration. Seth, who helped him look for Johnny even when he feared he was searching for the one man who could replace him. Seth, who’d suspected he owned only a fractured sliver of what remained of Jake’s heart and agreed to marry him anyway. Seth, who was bitten in half by a thresher maw while his hand was still in Jake’s. Seth, who’d deserved so much better. 

His breath failed him. His vision went dark. After all these years, he was finally going home.


	2. More

I'm forgetting my reflection now, drowing in words unsaid,

Trying to hide what's inside underground, cause deep down I more than just miss you.

Truth is I'm more than just scared, ‘cause you're still alive in my head.

“More” by Billy Lockett

* * *

A part of him wasn’t even surprised when his eyes opened. He fought it. He thrashed, trying to pull out the tubes and wires keeping him chained to this world. He begged for death with a throat that wouldn’t work. 

When the darkness washed over him again, it brought relief until he realized that he still...wasn’t...fucking... _dead_. What _did_ a guy have to do to die around here, anyway? 

In the dead of night, or what passed for it on a spaceship, he’d often wondered if he was immortal. He’d spent a long time staring down the barrel of his pistol. He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, so he turned to ryncol to do it for him. Someday, it would work. 

When the woman started ordering him about on the burning spaceship, he stood and stared through the window. Mesmerised, he watched the flames lick at the walls. Perhaps his life was defined by fire, too. Fire on Mindoir. Fire in his back on Akuze. Fire on the _Normandy_. 

He’d almost been rolled back in N-school when a bonfire triggered a panic attack during Hell Week. He hadn’t slept in four or five days. They’d barely stopped moving. Everyone was hallucinating. His teammates had lit the thing, and suddenly he wasn’t on a beach in Rio. 

He was back in Felicity, standing on the sidewalk across from the baseball field where he and his friends had spent so much time. Friends who’d died around and under and on top of him. Friends whose bodies had grown cold against his. Friends whose blood still plastered his baseball uniform to his skin. 

A bonfire had glowed on the diamond, ironically cheerful amidst the inferno of burning buildings that roared around it. Two-by-two, shadowy figures had carried things over, tossing them into it. It wasn’t until the smell hit him that he’d realized it was people they were burning. The smell of campfire, burnt popcorn, and scorched coffee with just enough of a hint of meat to make his empty stomach growl and churn. He’d heaved into the sand and run.

He stood at the window in the burning space station and saw his ICT battle buddy, Red, gripping his shoulders. “Get it together, Shepard! Breathe. The demons dancing inside it can’t hurt you anymore. Whatever they were before, they’re just ghosts now.” 

She should know. She had her own. He’d watched her wrestle with them, and when he watched her watch the bonfire, he’d gotten the impression that she was contemplating walking into it. The same thing he was contemplating now. 

“Shepard! Grab your pistol from the locker! Now!”

Fuck that. If hell wanted him so badly, it could come get him. He sat down on the bed and rested his aching face in his hands. His fingertips traced the rough edges of seams in his flesh that had yet to knit together. Was he even real, or was this his afterlife?

The voice heaved a sigh and then said succinctly, “Johnny Shepard is alive. Take your pistol from the locker and do as I say, and I will take you to him.”

Jake’s head snapped up, evaluating her voice for a lie. It didn’t shake. It wasn’t sly. She didn’t cajole. She sounded resigned and irritated. Frustrated with him or telling the truth? He couldn’t tell, but walking through hell to find Johnny had become so ingrained into him that his feet began moving before he consciously chose to move. 

An hour later, he was sitting in a shuttle while strangers from goddamn fucking _Cerberus_ pried him with questions. Cerberus, who’d set thresher maws loose on a colony to see what would fucking happen. Cerberus, who’d murdered Seth as surely as if they’d pulled a trigger. Cerberus, who’d tortured the one other fucking person on his team who’d survived. Cerberus, the last fucking people he’d ever willingly work for. 

“I’m not answering another question until you tell me where Johnny is,” he said firmly. 

The woman, Miranda, said coolly, “I said I would take you to him, and I will. We just have to make a few stops first. Trust me, he _is_ alive and you _will_ see him.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the bulkhead. “That’s the problem, though. I don’t trust you. I want proof.”

“He’s a biotic,” she said. “Stronger than even you. He would run football plays in his head to control it when he had difficulty. He doesn’t have difficulty anymore.”

No one but Johnny’s family and Rinia, the turian who worked in his mom’s shop, had known about his biotic abilities. After seeing how ostracized she’d been when hers had manifested, his big sister Maxine had told him not to tell anyone when Johnny’s appeared. Rinia taught him to keep them hidden. She’d taught Jake, too. As far as he knew, he and she were the only ones Johnny had ever told about his method to focus them. Jake played piano on the side of his leg when he got anxious and they threatened to show on his skin. Johnny ran football plays. 

“Ask your questions.”

He answered by rote until they arrived at another space station where the Illusive Man waited. Jake cracked his knuckles, smiling grimly. The Illusive Man had a metric shit ton to answer for. It was about time he got to put his hands on the bastard. Saving him didn’t begin to make up for murdering Seth. Nothing would. He’d get Johnny’s location out of him, and then he’d rip the fucker in half.

He stalked down the staircase into...an empty room. _What the fuck?!_ A hologram formed around him. Jake imagined he could feel the blood boiling in his veins. His fingers tapped a rhythm against his leg to keep his biotics from flaring in fury and frustration as he exchanged barbed words with the Cerberus leader. 

“I’m not doing shit for you until I have what Miranda promised,” he said between his teeth. 

The Illusive Man tapped his cigar and flashed that maddening Mona Lisa smile. “Ah, yes. Your childhood boyfriend. Operative Lawson told you he’s alive. As it turns out, helping me helps you in this, Shepard. I can tell you where he is, but you’re going to need to retrieve him. First, though, there’s something I need from you.”

“I don’t think you have him,” Jake said. “I think you know I’ve been looking for him. And I think _you_ think you’ve found a lever big enough to overcome what you did on Akuze. You’re going to dangle him like a carrot in the hopes I’ll chase it. No fucking deal. Johnny’s _dead_.”

“He isn’t,” the Illusive Man said. “What’s more, you know it. That’s why you didn’t give up afterward. That’s why you’ve never pulled the trigger of that pistol you spend your nights looking into. You know he’s still alive and out there because you’ve seen him.”

“Bullshit.” Jake did an abrupt about face, ready to march out.

“He saved you on Akuze.” The Illusive Man’s voice brought him to a halt before he could step off the plate.

He froze, picturing the man from Akuze. Johnny-not-Johnny, his delirious mind had called him. He’d thought he was a figment, whether of his imagination or some afterlife he didn’t know or care, because the guy had looked so much like Johnny it hurt. But he’d acted like he didn’t know him. Johnny wouldn’t have been so close and pretended to be a stranger. Not in the second-worst moment of his life. 

“That wasn’t him.”

“You know it was, Shepard. Do this for me, and I will reunite you with him.” 

One favor turned into two and then three before Jake was finally aboard the new _Normandy_ , rocketing toward Purgatory. The new ship wasn’t enough to sway him to Cerberus’ side, but the way he saw it, the Alliance could go fuck itself. It hadn’t come in time to save Johnny or Hannah or Will or Maxine or Thomas or any-fucking-body else he’d ever known. It hadn’t come in time to save Seth. It hadn’t come in time to save his men on the first _Normandy_. 

What had the Alliance ever really done for him? They saved _him_ when all he wanted to do was die. He didn’t want to be saved, and he didn’t give a shit about saving the rest of the galaxy. So fuck ‘em.

If he joined up with Cerberus, he could infiltrate them from the inside. He could get information on their power structure, their funding, their leadership, and the Illusive Man. And when he found him, he would avenge the men and women who’d perished on a godforsaken planet courtesy of the Illusive Man’s curiosity. He’d avenge Seth.


	3. Burn It Down

I'm covered in hope. I'm filling with doubt that I'm not over you. No, I'm not over you.

Sometimes it hurts to forget the past. I'll burn it down and bring it back stronger.

And I'm putting my trust in an entire half-empty glass.

-“Burn It Down” by Billy Lockett

* * *

They docked with the prison ship a full three days after he’d woken up on Lazarus Station. He took Garrus and Massani with him. Mercs to deal with mercs. 

Unlike the others, the dossier on Johnny was short. 

**Shepard, John Lucas**

_\- Exceptional biotic ability_

_\- Note: Criminal background, currently in custody_

_John Shepard is rumored to be the most powerful human biotic ever encountered. Very little additional data regarding Shepard is available, except that the subject has a history of violence and should be approached carefully. Currently, Shepard is being held on the turian prison ship Purgatory. Cerberus has negotiated for the prisoner's release._

That was it. Jake had never gotten the chance to find out how powerful Johnny’s biotics were in comparison to his because Johnny was taken before they could get amps. Criminal history? History of violence? He’d liked rough sex and he hadn’t been afraid to break the rules when it suited him, but Johnny had never been violent unless provoked. He wasn’t completely convinced it was his Johnny. 

The picture, though. The fucking picture. 

‘Beautiful’ wasn’t sufficient. Pale, almond-shaped eyes popped so brightly that the rest of his face registered a few heartbeats after them. A dark blue limbal ring wrapped around irises that could never seem to decide if they were quicksilver or a pale, luminous green.

His face had changed since they were kids. It was all strong lines and flat planes, an almost perfect rectangle to a jawline chiseled into sharp angles that just barely kept it from being too long. 

The stubble that had begun to grow along it in the year before the raid had thickened. It accentuated the hollows of his cheeks and made his cheekbones look even higher and hollower than they were. His nose was long and slim, perfectly shaped. It had never developed the hook the tip had threatened to curve into when they were kids, and he’d finally grown into his ears. 

His lips, fuck, Jake had spent hours focusing on the perfect bow of his mouth. It was saved from femininity by a thin scar from taking a bat to the face when they were playing t-ball as kids. The scar was fainter than it had been, but it was still there in the picture. 

Jake had thought once or twice that either something would upset the balance of his face and be even more noticeable for the surrounding perfection or he was going to be painfully beautiful. How could it have been the latter given the atrocities he must have suffered? How could he look even more perfect than he had the day he was taken? It wasn’t Johnny.

Those thoughts stayed with him as he fought his way through the prison ship with Garrus and Zaeed beside him. Irritation buzzed around his ears like a gnat. This wasn’t enough of a challenge to bring on the singing anticipation of death. It was an annoyance, slowing him down, keeping him from his goal. He charged through enemies—that new skill, at least, was worth almost dying for—and threw shockwave after shockwave to clear a path. 

After what felt like an eternity but was only minutes, he finally stood in front of the cryo pod that held one John Lucas Shepard. It hissed up, steam billowing around it, obscuring his vision for a moment. And then it cleared. 

_Johnny_.

The man was shirtless, dressed in merc-style cargo pants, combat boots, and a black leather vest. His head was shaven to a buzz. His arms were covered in tattoos Jake couldn’t discern from a distance. There was a faint dusting of pale hair frosting his chest that he hadn’t had when they were kids. Heavy manacles shackled his wrists and neck. He was huge, taller than Jake, which was saying something. At least 6’4” and 250 pounds if he was an ounce but perfectly proportioned and solid muscle. Thor, all grown up. 

His fingers twitched. Jake stood as frozen as Johnny, his heart threatening to leap out of his chest. After all this time. He’d searched for so long. And now it felt like he could reach out and touch him. 

Fuck Cerberus. Fuck the Collectors. Fuck the Reapers. Jake was going to grab him and run. Somewhere no one could touch them. He didn’t care what Johnny had done to get himself locked up here. He didn’t care how much time had passed. 

This was Johnny. The same Johnny who’d carved an arrow heart around their initials in their tree to mark their engagement. The same one who’d proclaimed with casual sincerity, “So everybody who sees it knows I love you.” His Johnny. Here, alive, breathing. 

...Jerking free of his restraints and exploding a mech with his biotics before the ice was even fully thawed from his skin. _The fuck?_ Jake bolted for the door, chasing after him without regard for his companions. 

If the mercs had been an annoyance before, now they just pissed him off. They were standing between him and Johnny. Big. Fucking. Mistake. Nothing, _nothing,_ not even the devil himself would keep him from reaching Johnny this time. He’d peel this fucking ship apart with his bare hands deck by deck if he had to. 

“EDI,” he snapped into his comm. “Make sure no lifepods leave this station. No one leaves except on the _Normandy_.” The mercs would die for what they’d done to his _solnishka_. 

He ran into the docking bay in time to see a merc flanking an enraged Johnny. A single shot from his pistol took down the threat and got Johnny’s attention. The man jerked around to face him, his chest heaving and slick with sweat, biotics flaring around him like a thundercloud. 

This close, he could see the scars lining his body, including ones at his throat that made Jake flinch. They didn’t matter. They didn’t detract from him any more than Jake’s would have bothered Johnny if he’d gotten them when they were young. 

He was so beautiful, so _real_. Jake’s heart stuttered. His armor was the only thing keeping his knees from buckling. Thirteen years, not counting the two he’d just spent dead. He’d been looking for him for thirteen years. 

They’d been born in the same hospital on the same floor on the same day. They’d slept in the same nursery their first night of life. Jake’s mother worked for Johnny’s father. They’d gone to the same school, been friends for their entire lives before the day Jake’s biotics manifested in class and they’d admitted their feelings for each other behind the school. Johnny had been a part of his life for his entire life, even in his absence. He’d loved him since he was twelve years old. 

That love had been shared with Seth for a few years, but it had never gone away. The shameful secret Jake kept and Seth pretended not to know was that if Johnny had ever walked through the door, his choice would have been painful but instant. It was Johnny. It was always Johnny. 

Kaidan had said once that he envied Jake because most people weren’t fortunate enough to have even one great love, and he’d been blessed with two, even if neither had lasted. He was right. But Johnny wasn’t just his great love. He was his soul. 

“Johnny,” he managed to choke out. “Johnny Shepard?”

Johnny stopped his agitated pacing, his pale eyes scanning Jake from head to toe and back again. 

“You’re dead.”

“So are you.” 

He didn’t know what to do. Over the past three days, he’d imagined this going so many different ways. Sometimes, they hugged and held each other tight. Sometimes, they dragged each other into the nearest enclosed space and went at each other. Sometimes, Johnny screamed at him. Sometimes, he broke down and cried. 

They’d never just awkwardly stared at each other, though. 

Johnny’s lip curled in disdain. His eyes flashed from the ship back to Jake. 

“You work for Cerberus now?” he asked, as if saying ‘You’re married to Reigan now?’ Like he’d sold out. Like he’d betrayed Johnny somehow. 

“They work for me,” Jake said. “I’d work with a goddamn batarian if it meant finding you. I have, in fact. Cerberus just happened to be the devil with you in their pocket.”

“Right,” Johnny drawled. “You’ve been _very_ concerned with my whereabouts, I’m sure. Who the fuck are these guys? They Blue Suns, too? You do have a problem with loyalty, don’t you? You just can’t decide which side you’re on.”

Jake took a step forward. “The hell are you talking about, Picard, and why don’t you seem surprised to see me?”

Johnny sneered, “You don’t even remember, do you? Yeah, I’m surprised to see you still alive because the last I heard, you died in some freak attack after I saved your ungrateful ass on Akuze.”

Jake gaped at him. “That _was_ you. Why didn’t you say something?! Why did you let me believe you were a fucking hallucination? Why did you _leave?_ ”

Johnny crossed his arms over his chest, incredulity widening his eyes. He said sarcastically, “I’m sorry. Were you hoping for a tearful, romantic reunion over your dead lover’s corpse? Half a corpse, really, if you want to get technical. Would you have let him go if I’d kissed you? I mean, _I_ was worried about keeping you alive, but you’d made this whole new life without me, so why the fuck would I want to come along and mess that up?”

Garrus stepped forward as the station shuddered under their feet. “I hate to break this up, guys, but we really should be going.”

“I am not going on a Cerberus ship,” Johnny said. “You have any idea how long I’ve been trying to get _away_ from those bastards? Oh. No. You don’t. Because you weren’t fucking there!”

Three strides had him in Johnny’s face, the words shooting from his mouth like bullets. “I walked through hell for you, Johnny. When I wanted to give up and die, I pushed forward for _you_. When I got shot in the fucking back, I crawled for _you_. The minute I was old enough to enlist, I did so I could look for _you_. I have spent every fucking credit of insurance money and signing bonus and settlement money I got trying to find _you_ . I have hired information brokers and mercenaries and batarians and a goddamn _psychic_ trying to find you. I’ve been looking for you for thirteen goddamn years and only stopped because I got spaced and even then, _I was looking for you!_ So fuck you, Johnny. Come or burn. At least I have my answer.”

With that, he stalked to the airlock. Pain radiated through him. This was not how he wanted it to go. He wanted to hold him and never let go. The man behind him was scarred, inside and out, hard and cold and hurting. Jake had never seen Johnny like that. He didn’t know how to soothe the pain. He just knew he couldn’t do it on this dying station. 

The four of them boarded the _Normandy_ in silence.


	4. Chapter 4

There ain’t nobody could tame you and your wild heart.

Take me back to those barefoot summer nights.

Remember when we said don’t let go ‘til we die. 

Take me back.

-“Wild Heart” by Daughtry

* * *

Jake sat at his desk in his cabin, but it wasn’t his terminal he was here for. The holo piano had been repaired and parts replaced so many times that all that remained of the one he’d bought as a child was the memory. Like him. His fingers flowed over the keys in patterns that were rusty from disuse but seared into his mind all the same. 

He hadn’t played in years, but he’d kept the instrument. He’d kept everything he could from home. When he’d been assigned to the first _Normandy_ , he’d left his valued possessions in storage on Arcturus. Anderson had been kind enough to retrieve them for him and return them the last time he’d docked on the Citadel. 

Now, Johnny’s hat—frayed to the point of being unwearable—sat on the desk by his bed. The model Tardis occupied a place in the glass case with the model ships he’d started building during sleepless nights. And the holo piano lived in a locked drawer in his desk. 

Everything that mattered to him was on this ship now. He was all-in on this mission, one way or another. If Johnny didn’t come back, he wouldn’t, either. He had nothing left to come back to, and everything here to save. Helpful, if he ever decided to go pirate. 

The door swished open behind him. Bootfalls from the only person authorized to enter the room echoed on the deck. Johnny’s low whistle was mocking, like everything about him now. A defense mechanism, and an obvious one when Jake knew it wasn’t the first time he’d come in. It was the first time he’d approached him, though. 

“What happened to you?” Jake asked softly, still looking through the glass into the bedroom. 

“What do you care?” Johnny asked, leaning a shoulder against the empty fish tank and hooking a foot over the other with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“I care,” Jake said, refusing to look directly at him. 

Johnny’s gaze sat heavily on him for several moments before he sighed. His voice was rough, distant. “They landed close to the house. Hit the McAlister’s first. Will ran for Erin, but he couldn’t get to her. He came back to warn us. We were in the attic, but Mom heard him and went down for him. Maxine followed. The door...they kicked it in, and Dad started shooting. 

“I came down to help, but they got past him, and they shot Will right in front of me. Max jumped on Mom and shoved her down. They shot her in the back, and then they grabbed Mom by the hair and shot her in the face. I just...watched. I froze. I was so fucking scared, I did nothing. I was a fucking coward.” His voice trailed off.

“They hit the bus,” Jake said quietly. “We were talking about you, and then...Coach tried to protect us, but it didn’t work. We tried to get out the back, but the door was stuck. They got Jameson. And then Dustin’s head…. And then Ronnie. He knocked me down. We were all in this... _pile_ of bodies. Our friends. 

“It took Ronnie a long time to die. I felt it. Felt him fight. Felt him stop breathing. Felt him get cold. I wanted to get to you, but I was so convinced that if I moved, they were just waiting to shoot me, too, so I waited till nighttime. I hid in the bodies of our friends and I waited while my family was dying without me. Who’s the bigger coward?”

He’d never told anyone what happened. Not his shrink. Not Seth. Not the Alliance guys who’d ‘rescued’ him. They couldn’t understand. They could never understand what it had been like. But Johnny was there.

“Both of us, I guess,” Johnny said, raking a hand over his face. “One of them grabbed me. I tried to fight then, but he knocked me in the head with his gun, and I went down. They dragged me out over Will’s body, past Dad in the living room. There was so much blood. I didn’t know a person had that much blood in them.” 

Jake had thought something similar when he saw it. But Thomas’ body was gone by then. He still didn’t know where or what they’d done with it. 

Jake said, “I came for you. I walked from outside of town. Everything was on fire. It was day, but it looked like nighttime from all the smoke. I know I told you I’d walk through hell for you, but I didn’t realize it would be literal. That was what it was like, though. It was like our town had been dragged down to hell, and I was trapped in it. I don’t even know how long it took me to get home. I was outside the house when they shot me. I laid there for three days.” 

He tapped the back of his shoulder where a trio of bullet scars still remained as proof that he was still himself. Some of the acid scars on his back from Akuze had been replaced with new skin, but there were still strips of slick silvered skin like tiger stripes.

Johnny’s eyes went to his hand and his posture relaxed incrementally. “They dragged me onto the ship with a handful of other people. Fewer slaves than I’d expected. They weren’t there for us. They were there to send a message. They froze me with this beam of light and put a control wire in my head. No anesthesia. No pain meds. Just threaded it through my skin and into my brain. I thought that alone would kill me, but it didn’t. We all just huddled together, shaking. I was terrified they were going to take us to batarian space.”

“Where did they take you?” he asked, uncertain of whether he wanted the answer.

“Omega. I was there for two years.”

“I went to Omega when we were eighteen,” Jake said. “Right after I finished Alliance training. My first leave. The guy who...who took me off of Mindoir, he said to try Omega or Illium, so I did. I didn’t find you.” 

“Did you try Aria?” he asked. 

“No.” He hadn’t met Aria until he’d gone to fetch Garrus, Zaeed, and Mordin. 

Johnny snorted humorlessly. “Then you wouldn’t have found me even if I’d still been there. Aria T’Loak was the only person high enough up to take on the gangs.”

“I destroyed Omega’s gangs,” he said absently, his fingers sliding over the piano keys. “Too late for you, though. Where’d you go after Omega?”

“Pragia,” he answered. “They sold me to Cerberus. Or, well, transferred me.”

Jake’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?”

“I told you I’ve been trying to get away from them for years,” Johnny said. “They wanted me for my biotics. Wanted to make a super soldier. I...that’s actually why I’m here. I want to go back. They have answers I _have to_ know. And then I want to blow that fucking place up. You’re going to want the answers, too, but I doubt you’re going to keep working for them after, so the odds of them letting us are probably slim to none.”

“I told you. They work for me,” he said. “The Illusive Man will let me do whatever the fuck I want as long as I stop the Collectors.”

“And wherever I am, there you’ll be, yeah?” Johnny asked sardonically. “Which is, of course, the irony. Because _I_ can’t leave. Part of why I need to go to Pragia. I want to find the code to undo what they’ve done.” 

“You’re talking pretty openly about this,” Jake noted. 

Johnny cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re a Spectre, and you were always fucking smart. You mean to tell me you haven’t found every damn bug in this room and figured out a way to block that AI from listening in when you don’t want it to?”

“You always did know me,” Jake said with a ghost of a smile. 

Johnny fixed Jake with a long look. Something vulnerable and afraid slid behind his eyes. “Which one’s the better sidekick? Bucky Barnes or Chewbacca?”

“Bucky,” Jake said without hesitation. 

Their first time out with their friends as a couple, one of Johnny’s friends had proclaimed Chewy better than Bucky. Johnny disagreed. Jake had sided with Chewy. But something told him that was the wrong answer this time. Jake was more Han Solo than Captain America, but Johnny wasn’t a Chewbacca. 

“Why?” Johnny asked in a strained voice.

Jake considered it for a moment. “Because even though he goes after Cap, his love for him is strong enough to break through the brainwashing. It takes time for him to come back from it, but Bucky loves him from childhood to old age.”

Johnny held his eyes, whispering, “Cerberus is Hydra.”

“Then I guess we’re going to Siberia,” he said. 

“Thank you.” He took a step forward, like he was going to come to him, but then turned and walked away. 

“Wait!” Jake rose from his chair and reached out. Johnny turned and raised an eyebrow at him. Jake withdrew the charm from his pocket and held it out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner, _solnishka_. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Johnny sighed, the hardness melting from his face. The boy Jake had fallen in love with all those years ago looked back at him. Three strides brought them together and then Johnny’s forehead was resting against his, his hands cradling Jake’s face like it was fragile and precious. 

“Oh, Jakey-baby,” he breathed. “I wish…. So fucking much. Be patient, Cap. I’m trying to work it out.” 

“You’re still protecting me, aren’t you?” Jake asked. 

“Always,” Johnny whispered, his lips ghosting over Jake’s before he jerked back. “And I can’t do that when you let me so close. I’m just as dangerous to you right now as Bucky was to Steve. You can’t trust me, Yakov. Not until we go to Pragia.”

“Then that just became our first priority,” Jake said.


	5. Far Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

'Cause you know that I love you.

I have loved you all along and I miss you.

On my knees, I'll ask last chance for one last dance

'Cause with you, I'd withstand all of hell to hold your hand

-Far Away by Nickelback

* * *

Horizon got in the way. When Johnny found out he was being left behind again, he threatened to tear apart the subdeck if Jake didn’t explain himself ricky-fucking-tick. Every bit of progress they’d made in the cabin seemed to evaporate, especially when Johnny heard that Jake’s old crewmate Kaidan was the reason they were rushing.

“Did you fuck him, too?” Johnny demanded. “Christ, Jake, how many people _have_ you let inside you?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business!” Jake shouted. “Besides, are you going to honestly tell me that you spent all this time saving yourself for me?”

“Once!” Johnny exclaimed. “ _One_ time! Right after Akuze, I picked up a dude in a fucking bar who looked like you, and I fucked him in the bathroom. But it wasn’t you. He didn’t moan like you. He didn’t shake like you. He didn’t like what you like. 

“I got off and I walked away and the next time it got to be too much, I hijacked an asari spaceliner and crashed it into an asteroid because I was too drunk to fly straight. That was my first stint in a place like Purgatory. You’ve seen my rap sheet. You know it wasn’t my last. You, meanwhile, seem to have a fetish for fucking your friends!” 

“I did not fuck Kaidan!” he snapped. “This jealousy thing, it’s getting old, Johnny. You knew where I was after Akuze. I haven’t been hiding! The whole fucking galaxy knew where I was! _Strangers_ have found ways to message me. But not you. You never reached out.”

“ _Because I helped kill your team!_ ” Johnny roared. “I helped Cerberus set those maws loose! I helped murder your precious Seth! I figured you’d rather see the batarians who raided our fucking planet before you’d want to see me!”

Pain lanced through him at the admission, making him sway. Pain for Seth. Pain for himself. Pain for Johnny, who stood trembling, laced with dark energy, his eyes bright with fear and self-loathing, his fingers digging into his scalp. Johnny turned, pacing away from him, curled in on himself. 

“I didn’t know,” Johnny said in a choked voice. “I was out of it. Not in control. I didn’t know it was you before people started dying and someone screamed your name. I fought it, but it wasn’t until the Alliance refused to come exfil you that I broke free. I took my guys and told them I’d blow their fucking heads off if they didn’t help me save you, so they did. But none of that matters because you’re never going to see me as anything but his killer.”

“Damn it, Johnny,” Jake said tiredly, reaching for him. Johnny flinched but didn’t jerk away. “If you’d known and had still done it, we’d be having a different conversation. But I have lived with so much pain for so long that this? This is a blip. I don’t care what you’ve done. If absolution is what you need from me, it’s given. You’re it for me, J. You always have been.” 

“I don’t deserve it,” Johnny muttered.

He let Jake turn him to face him. Jake’s hand slid along the stubble covering his jaw. He whispered, “I have searched for you for so long, _solnishka_. You could kill me, and I would die grateful that it was your hands around my neck and your eyes I was looking into. 

“Yeah, I’ve fucked other people. _I_ fucked _them_. You’re still the only person I’ve ever allowed inside me. I’m not going after Kaidan because I love him. I’m going after Kaidan because he stood by me when he had no reason to believe in me. He’s a friend, that’s all. As soon as the colony is safe, we’re going to Pragia.”

Johnny’s eyes closed and his brow furrowed. “Why don’t you want me in the field?”

“You’re a liability,” Jake said. “There’s only one thing in this universe I’m afraid of now, and that’s losing you. If you are out there, I’m going to be so focused on protecting you that I will endanger the mission.”

“I can take care of myself,” Johnny said, but pressed against him, walking him backwards toward the cot tucked away in the hole he’d chosen for his nest. Their breath mingled, their hands cupping each other’s faces. “What’s our ETA?”

“Forty-five minutes,” Jake said breathlessly. 

“Fuck it. I wanna see if I can still make you glow,” Johnny growled, dipping his head and capturing Jake’s lips in a hard, hungry kiss. Jake groaned deep in his chest, shoving at the leather vest covering Johnny’s chest. The other man let him push it off and jerked at the shirt Jake wore. “I hate seeing you in their colors. Wear something fucking else, Jakey-baby.” 

“Forgot how bossy you were,” Jake said, grinning against his mouth before pulling back long enough to strip out of his shirt and kick his boots off. 

Johnny shoved his hands away and tugged at the waistband of Jake’s pants, pulling him flush again. His kiss was desperate, clicking teeth and questing tongue, mewling sounds escaping from his throat like he was begging and grieving. He tore at Jake’s pants, shoving them down and using his knee to push them to the deck so he didn’t have to break the kiss. Jake gave Johnny’s cargo pants the same treatment, needing them out of the way. He didn’t want air between them, much less clothing. 

When Johnny sprung free from his trousers to bounce against Jake’s belly, he moaned loud enough he was sure the engineers would hear. Johnny’s arms wrapped around him, and he lowered him onto the cot, nipping at his throat when Jake’s head fell back. Jake clung to him, trapped between need for him and the need to sob with relief at having his skin against him again. 

“You’re here,” Jake gasped. “Fuck, _solnishka_ , you’re here. You’re alive and whole and sane and _here_.”

“I dunno about whole or sane,” Johnny said against his pulse, drawing Jake’s thigh up over his hip and sliding their bodies along each other. He raised his head, his eyes dropping to Jake’s chest. He released Jake’s thigh, bringing a trembling hand up to trace the tattoo over his heart. “Jakey…. You...when did you…?”

“The day I joined the military,” he said. “I told you. It’s always been yours.”

“I love you, Jake Shepard.” The words were a strained whisper, as if he was afraid they would be rejected if they were offered any more confidently.

“I love you, too, Johnny Shepard,” Jake said, sliding his hand over the other man’s buzzed hair and drawing his head down. “Always and forever. I’d still walk through hell for you.” 

“I’ll never let you do it alone again,” Johnny said, wise enough and jaded enough now to know better than to promise again that he wouldn’t ever have to. “Don’t leave me behind again. I can’t live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.”

The thought made him tremble with fear, but he stroked Johnny’s hair and whispered, “Okay.”

This time, their kiss was slow, melting like the sundae they’d shared on their first date, lingering like time was on their side. Johnny’s hands were callused in ways they hadn’t been before. His palms were scarred with crescent moons and the edges of his charm. But they remembered his body. Jake sucked in a breath as they brushed over his nipple and trailed down his belly. He splayed his own over Johnny’s broad back, tracing the raised seams in his skin even as Johnny’s mouth explored Jake’s glowing ones. 

Johnny’s eyes, blue-green in the dark, locked on his. His lips sipped at Jake’s skin, his tongue tracing the lines of his abs, down to his hips. When Johnny’s teeth grazed over his hipbones, he arched off the cot, sucking in a breath. Johnny cocked an eyebrow at the piercing peeking out from his foreskin, flicking his tongue over it. Dark energy flushed over Jake’s skin, and Johnny grinned wickedly. 

“This is new. I’m going to have fun playing with this when I get you all to myself without a time limit.” His teeth closed over the bead, tugging gently. 

Jake cried out at the sensation, writhing and clutching at the cot, Johnny, anything he could reach. His hips rocked helplessly. 

“Fuck, Johnny! Please!” 

“You always did beg so nicely,” Johnny purred, reaching under the cot for something. 

There was a pop and then slick fingers stroked between his ass cheeks. Warm, soft lips trailed down his length to his balls and further still. Johnny used his nose to nudge Jake’s thighs apart, and pressed his open mouth against him, his tongue circling his entrance. Jake barely recognized the sounds he made as his own. He only had a moment to be glad he’d showered before Johnny’s tongue was lapping at him, pushing into him, and he was begging like he was a sixteen year-old virgin again. 

Johnny lifted his head and grinned possessively at him. “That’s my ass, yeah? Nobody else’s?” 

“ _Da_ ,” Jake grunted, reverting back to his native Russian. 

Johnny clucked his tongue in mock sympathy, circling his entrance with a finger. “That must have been so unsatisfying for you, sweetheart. My Jakey-baby _loved_ the stretch when he took me. It drove you wild. You remember?” 

“ _Ya vse pomnyu_ ,” he moaned, rocking his hips against Johnny’s hand. _I remember everything_. 

Their first time on the hideabed in the Shepards’ living room the day he’d been brought to live there, with their pants around their knees because they’d promised to keep their clothes on. Their last time in Johnny’s bed on his parents’ anniversary when Hannah and Thomas had gone out of town, with Johnny’s leg in a cast and the promise of forever on their lips. The treehouse. The back of Thomas’ truck. That time behind the dugout when Johnny had pushed him up against the cinderblock wall and taken him hard and fast during morning workout when they’d been supposed to be running. He remembered Johnny’s love for dirty talk, his insistence on being in control, his need to sink his teeth into Jake’s flesh like he was marking him.

Johnny pressed a finger into him, slow enough to test for resistance but smoothly enough to leave no doubt that he was taking what he wanted. Jake’s heel dug into the rough webbing of the cot. His hands roamed over Johnny’s buzzed head and down to his strong shoulders, needing to feel him, to reassure himself he was really there. A second finger slid into him. They crossed, and Johnny’s wrist twisted the way he’d learned Jake liked. His heel pushed through the webbing, tearing it with a loud rip and slamming into the decking beneath it. Johnny chuckled, maintaining his smooth twist in and out. Warm fluid drizzled onto Jake’s belly, dripping from the piercing in the tip of his cock. He gasped for air that wouldn’t come. 

“You need me, baby?” Johnny murmured, flicking his tongue over the bead and sucking gently at it.

“Yes! God, yes, fuck me, Johnny... Ohh, fucking hell...” 

“The engineers are going to hear you begging me for it,” Johnny informed him, sliding his hand out and prowling up his body. He kissed him hard and possessively, nipping at his lip. “Louder. I want the whole ship to know the great Commander Shepard begs for my dick up his ass.”

Jake groaned between his teeth, wrapping his legs around Johnny’s waist and sliding his hands along his jaw. “Fuck me, Johnny,” he ordered between his teeth. 

A grin flashed over Johnny’s face, and a slap rang out through the subdeck as his hand met Jake’s ass. “Have you forgotten who’s in charge here, Jakey-baby? I’m afraid I don’t have time to remind you at the moment. Maybe this should wait till later.” 

He started to draw back and Jake snapped, “Damn it, _please_ , Johnny. If you don’t fuck me right now—” 

Johnny’s hand clapped over his mouth, his eyes sparkling. He pressed slowly into Jake, the hot stretch of his thick length pushing into him making Jake’s eyes roll back in his head. 

“Shh. Do you really want poor Gabby to hear you?”

“Ohh, fuck _me_ ,” he groaned against Johnny’s palm. 

Johnny’s voice turned husky. “Make no mistake, baby, I am. And when we get back on this ship, you and I are spending the time between here and Pragia with me buried so deep inside you, we both forget I ever existed anywhere else.”

He kept his hand on Jake’s mouth as he withdrew almost completely before sinking fully into him with a deep moan. His eyes bored into Jake’s. His tongue poked between his teeth the way it did when he was engrossed in something that mattered to him. His hips snapped, each thrust deep and hard, sealing them together. He hooked Jake’s thigh over his shoulder, opening him so he could go even deeper. When Jake reached a hand down to stroke himself, Johnny snarled at him.

“I say when you come, Jakey-baby. Hands on me, not you.”

Most of the time they’d spent together, Johnny had been doing things to him. It wasn’t until that very last night that he’d finally allowed himself to lay back and enjoy, letting Jake explore and learn what he liked to feel, not just what he liked to do. Jake kept his eyes on Johnny’s as he wrapped his lips around Johnny’s nipple, sucking it into his mouth. 

The other man’s moan was loud enough to carry through the deck, but that only spurred Jake on. He kissed across the scar tissue to the other, grazing his teeth over the soft skin. A shudder ran through Johnny’s body, and his rhythm broke. He drove into Jake, his head back and eyes closed. 

A hand slid under his ass to angle his hips up so that Johnny could thrust against his spot, and the other wrapped around his length, stroking in rough time with his hips. His thumb circled the exposed tip, brushing over his piercing in an absent figure-eight. Dark energy flashed over his skin, combining with Johnny’s free-flowing biotics. His moan rang off the deck as his body tightened around the man he’d loved through worlds and decades, spurting into his hand and onto their bellies. Johnny buried himself in Jake, biting down hard on his shoulder, his name a muffled shout. 

They lay trembling, clinging to each other, until Joker came over the com with the warning that they were approaching Horizon and there was a ‘big-ass dirt dauber nest flying over it.’ Jake’s arms tightened around Johnny. 

“I will not survive it if you die, so if I bring you, you’d better fucking stay alive,” Jake whispered against his ear. 

Johnny turned his head and pressed his lips hard against Jake’s. “Same to you, Jakey-baby.”

Jake pressed their foreheads together for a moment and sighed. “Alright. Let’s get this over with.”


	6. Make It Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy N7 Day!

When the sins of my father weigh down in my soul

And the pain of my mother will not let me go

Well I know there can come fire from the sky to refine the purest of kings

And even though I know this fire brings me pain

Even so, and just the same, make it rain

-“Make It Rain” by Ed Sheeran

* * *

Jake thought Johnny was going to crawl into his lap during the shuttle ride to Pragia. He was pale and shaking. A fine sheen of sweat misted his brow. He alternately paced and curled in on himself on the bench. His fists slammed into the seat or raked against his skull. Three times, he tried to convince Jake to turn the shuttle around. 

Garrus, to his credit, ignored them, pretending to sleep. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Jake had reached out a few times, knowing the darkness his friend found himself in. He figured the turian would let him in once he found Sidonis and there was something he could do. He needed time, just like Jake had.

Jake finally leaned forward and clasped Johnny’s face in his hands, forcing him to look at him. His eyes were fever-bright, his skin sallow. He wrapped his hands around Jake’s wrists but held them there. 

“I can’t do this,” he whispered. 

“Yes, you can,” Jake said calmly. “I’m with you. No one is going to touch you.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” he admitted.

Jake’s thumbs stroked his high cheekbones. “I know, baby. Breathe. The demons dancing in that place can’t hurt you anymore. Whatever they were before, they’re just ghosts now.”

“What if they can, though?” Johnny asked. “What if we find out something we can’t handle? What if we find out something  _ you _ can’t handle? What if there’s no way to undo Cerberus’ control, and I’m always a danger to you?”

“You’re afraid they’re going to order you to kill me?” Jake asked. Johnny nodded. Jake smiled gently. “Baby, I know you’re a powerhouse. You always have been whether it was sports or biotics. But I’m an N7, a vanguard, a Spectre, and I spike almost as high as you. I guarantee I can hold my own against you if it comes to that.”

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“All other things being equal, training beats brute strength any day,” Jake said. “And I have the best training in the galaxy.” 

Garrus cracked an eye and looked at them. “No offense, kid, but I’ve seen what Shepard can do. Rachni, the Thorian, Saren, geth, thresher maws, a Reaper. Even death didn’t keep him down. I don’t think we’re as worried about you as you are.”

Jake said, “I know you, remember? You come in acting funny, and I’ll know it. What makes you dangerous is that I’ll let you close, but as long as TIM is happy, you’re not a threat, which means as long as we’re going after the Collectors, your use to him is in keeping me focused. You’re my carrot until the mission is over. Only then might you become the stick. And that gives us time to get you unbrainwashed.”

Garrus said, “Even if we don’t find the answers here, there’s still Mordin if you can interest him. And Miranda if you can gain her loyalty.”

Johnny scoffed, but Jake nodded. “She needs help with her sister. A grateful Miranda might be exactly the key we need. You come with me for that and stop sniping at her, and how could she tell us no?”

“I’ll think about it,” Johnny said as the shuttle touched down. He swallowed hard and pressed his forehead to Jake’s before straightening. “Let’s get this over with.”

Pragia was a nightmare. Jake didn’t want to think about the filthy, open-air surgical suites with chairs decked out with manacles and blood. There was no need to shackle a sedated patient. He didn’t want to read the dry reports of the “experiments” performed on Subject Zero. Johnny. Torture is what it was. 

“I thought it was the batarians I had to fear,” Johnny said as they stood at one terminal. “They were...brutal...in their training, but they still kept to a kind of code. We were animals to them, but we were animals who were reminded that we could work our way out of slavery. They didn’t hurt us for the sake of it. They didn’t pit us against each other in fights to the death rewarded with drugs we had to fight addiction to on top of everything else.”

“Did you?” Jake asked. “Fight it?”

“Mostly,” he said. “Some days...some days, I just wanted to escape into it. Sometimes I did. But when they started calling to me, I’d think ‘Jake won’t love you anymore if you’re a junkie.’ I knew you were alive, you see. They didn’t tell me about Seth. You were too good of a prod when I had hope I could get to you if I just gave them what they wanted. If I did well, they’d sometimes give me a vid clip of you they’d collected. Joining the Alliance. Your first promotion. Your college graduation. You commissioning. Walking down the street. Didn’t matter. Could’ve shown me a vid of you sleeping or taking a shit and I’d have watched it till they took it away.”

Jake rested his hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “If I’d known that you were alive, I never would have looked twice at Seth or anyone else. As it was, I felt guilty. I think I proposed to him because I felt like I owed it to him. I convinced myself that you and I were sixteen and I couldn’t find you because you were dead, which meant I’d kept my promise to you. I’d been  _ your _ forever. And I’d carry you with  _ me _ forever, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be his, too.”

“And you were,” Johnny choked out. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any right to be jealous.”

The scrape of a boot cut into their conversation, but when they fought their way through and stopped at a new terminal, Jake said, “You do have a right. I would be. If you’d found someone else and loved him and promised him what was supposed to be mine. I wouldn’t have  _ begrudged _ it, but I’d have envied it.”

Johnny nodded. “I know it makes me seem crazy. That I can’t stand the thought of someone else’s hands on you. That it helps that you’ve only…” he cleared his throat and glanced at Garrus, “you know.”

“Pitched?” he said.

“Yeah. Makes the other way special, at least, knowing it’s just us.”

“You are special, Johnny,” he said. “You’re my life.”

They activated the terminal. A tinny voice spoke matter-of-factly.  _ Subject Zero is everything we’d hoped he would be. The batarian raid on his homeworld was the perfect cover. The other test subjects were useful. The sole survivor searches for him, but no one suspects our involvement. It’s unfortunate that we were unable to obtain him as well. He would have been a perfect candidate for final testing before… _

The rest of the report faded into a din as he and Johnny stared at each other in stunned silence. Mindoir. The raid. The batarians. Cerberus’ doing. That was why they hadn’t taken many slaves. Cerberus had killed an entire planet just to get to Johnny. It shouldn’t have been shocking after Akuze, but Akuze was a brand new colony. Mindoir had children. Babies. Families. 

“Did you know?” Jake asked.

“I...wondered,” Johnny said, his voice thick with guilt. 

“I’ll kill him,” Jake snarled, smashing his fist through the terminal display. “I will rip him limb from limb while he watches, and then I will put him back together just to do it again!”

“How?”


	7. Bad Company

Rebel souls, deserters we've been called. 

Chose a gun and threw away the song.

"Eye for an eye." "Tooth for a tooth." "Blood for blood."

We've all gotta die.

-From “Bad Company” by Five Finger Death Punch

* * *

Jake stood in the cell where Johnny had been held for years while Jake had been living free, going about his life as best he could. Jake had thought he’d had it bad. They’d both lost their family, but while he’d known the Shepards his whole life, he’d only been family for a short time. Johnny had been born into it. Jake had watched his friends die. Johnny had watched his mother, brother, and sister die and had seen his father dead. Jake had been taken to a world he didn’t want to live on with a good family he didn’t want to be part of. Johnny had been taken to other worlds and enslaved and tortured. 

Aside from Akuze, his life had been a cakewalk in comparison to Johnny’s. The fact that Johnny wasn’t utterly insane was a testament to his strength. If the worst thing about him was that he got excessively jealous and possessive over the only person left to him in the galaxy; well, that almost seemed reasonable. Jake was pretty fucking possessive of him, too. 

“Mom would be proud of you,” Jake said softly. Garrus waited outside the door, so it was just the two of them standing in front of the glass that looked out over the barren courtyard. 

“ _Why_?” he asked incredulously. 

Jake shrugged. “Your fortitude. Your inherent goodness. Your strength. You have an origin story worthy of a supervillain, but you’re choosing to be a hero instead. Well, maybe kind of an antihero, but still. You’re still _you_. Banged up a little.” He chuckled at Johnny’s upraised eyebrow. “Okay, a lot. But she’d still recognize you as her son.”

Johnny swallowed hard and nodded without looking at him. “Thanks. Anyway, so how are we going to beat Cerberus?”

“We need Garrus in here for this,” he said.

“Are you sure you trust him?” Johnny asked.

“With my life,” Jake said firmly. “He’s as loyal as they come, and he has no love for Cerberus. He’s here for me, not TIM.”

“Alright,” Johnny conceded. 

Jake waved Garrus in and said, “We’re going for the Illusive Man. As soon as we get finished with the Collectors, he’s our target.”

Garrus flicked a mandible. “One problem, no one knows where he is or even who he really is.”

Jake said, “One person on our ship does and possibly two. EDI knows everything about Cerberus. It’s locked behind firewalls, but it’s there and we can get to them.”

Johnny shook his head. “She’s an advanced AI designed for cyberwarfare. How do you propose to hack her?”

“I don’t,” Jake said. “I’m going to convert her. She’s an AI, which means she’s self-learning. And that means she can make her own choices.”

“If you unshackle her,” Johnny said. “Right? I mean, I didn’t go to college or anything, but—okay, that was snarky. Sorry. I may not have a college education, but it seems like they’d have failsafes to keep her from doing just that.”

Garrus’ mandible flicked again and he raised a brow plate. “You want to set loose an unshackled AI on the _Normandy_?” 

“Yeah,” Jake said, looking from one to the other. 

“And I’m worried about _my_ sanity,” Johnny grumbled. “Fine. Yeah. Do it. I’m with you. These fuckers killed everyone we’d ever known. They literally ended the world. We need to end them, and we can’t do that without EDI on our side.”

“Miranda, too,” Garrus said. “We’re going to need her. Jacob as well.”

They were going to need Miranda regardless. Some of Cerberus’ control came from the chip in Johnny’s head, which Chakwas and Mordin could remove, but some of it was actual brainwashing. Something told him Miranda would know how to reverse it, but she would need to be willing to do so. Jacob, though, was a different story.

“I don’t know if we can trust Jacob,” Jake said. “He’s loyal to his own ideals, but I don’t know what those are. He knowingly chose Cerberus over the Alliance because he believed in them. I’d rather leave him out of this.” 

“Who else might help?” Johnny asked. 

Jake said, “Joker, Chakwas, Kasumi, Zaeed if we pay him to care. Grunt and Mordin are toss-ups. They won’t hurt, at least. Maybe some of the new recruits.”

Garrus said, “Tali. She hates Cerberus.”

“She’s on my list,” Jake said. “We’re going to Haestrom next. Gabby and Ken will be on our side. They joined for me.”

Garrus said, “We took down Saren and Sovereign with a team roughly that size.”

Jake said, “I did a little reading on Justicars for the asari we’re getting. I’m not sure how her Code applies to humans, but if we can convince her it does and if I’m understanding correctly, she’d be honor-bound to help. And there’s an assassin, so add him to the pay-to-care slot if we can afford him.”

Johnny cocked his head. “You said something about a financial settlement from Mindoir?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. When I started trying to get money to find you, the Hayworths suggested I sue colonial affairs for failing to provide adequate defenses for the colony. Wrongful death type thing. We won. They’ll have to pay you and any other survivors a claim, too, come to think of it.”

“Use it for this,” he said.

“You sure?” Jake asked. “I’m afraid I already spent mine and the inheritance for the family. Information brokers insist on being paid whether they get results or not.”

“Positive,” Johnny said.

Jake said, “Alright. So we have a crew. Liara might help us with intel, especially if we can help her with the Broker. And I might even be able to convince Anderson or Hackett to throw some Alliance resources our way. Hackett _has_ asked a favor of me. I could ask one in return.”

“What favor?” Johnny asked. “Who’s Hackett?”

“The admiral I used to be assigned to,” Jake said. “It’s just an infiltration mission. Too sensitive for the Alliance, perfect for a Spectre.”

“Dangerous and illegal, you mean,” Johnny said as they planted the bomb and ran for the shuttle.

“Everything I do is dangerous and illegal,” Jake countered. “Think this is sanctioned? Hell, no. Miranda doesn’t even know we’re here unless EDI woke her up.”

“I guess you’re right,” Johnny conceded, jumping into the shuttle. “So what will we be doing on this typically dangerous and illegal secret mission?”

“Don’t worry about it now,” Jake said. “You sure this is what you want to do? Blow it up?”

Johnny’s attention thankfully redirected to the facility. “Yeah. I’m sure.” 

He sat across from Jake with their knees together, flipping the lid on the detonator. He held his hand out to Jake, a world of sorrow in those lagoon-blue eyes. Jake took it, and when Johnny’s thumb hovered over the detonator, he pounded on the door to the cockpit. 

Johnny held his gaze as he pushed the button, and Jake let the shockwave push him across the shuttle to sit beside him. Johnny leaned into him but held it together. For now. 


	8. Break On Me

There'll be days your heart don't wanna beat

You pray more than you breathe and you just wanna fall to pieces.

Break on me. Shatter like glass. Come apart in my hands. Take as long as it takes.

When your heart needs to break, just break on me.

-“Break on Me” by Keith Urban

* * *

Johnny held it together when the shuttle landed on the _Normandy_. He held it together in the lift up to the armory while they stripped their armor and turned in their weapons. He held it together through small talk with Jacob. He almost snapped on Kelly but maintained his control. He held himself up during the short ride to Jake’s cabin, and while they stripped out of their sweaty uniforms and went into the shower together. 

And then he snapped. Under the pounding hot spray, he buried his face in Jake’s shoulder and let the sobs wrack his body. Jake held him tight, bracing against the bulkhead to support them both, and crooned to him in Russian and English. His hands stroked his hair and his back. His lips feathered kisses over the shell of his ear. 

He wondered if he would ever be able to do this. Had he swallowed it down for too long? Had his tears dried up? He held Johnny while he broke, and while he’d wanted to do it so many times before, the answering tears wouldn’t come. Was he just numb or was he being strong for Johnny? Did it matter right now? 

“ _Eta_ okay, _solnishka_ ,” he soothed, pressing their temples together. 

“I don’t think you can really call me that right now,” Johnny said haltingly. 

“The sun still shines even when it rains,” Jake said. 

“Can we go to bed?” Johnny asked. 

“Yeah, baby.” 

He shut off the water and plucked a pair of towels from the cabinet, wrapping one around his waist and using the other to dry the water from Johnny’s body. When they were dry, he slid an arm around Johnny’s waist and walked with him to the bed, stripping the towels off before they lay down in an echo of the night Jake had come to live with the Shepards. 

This time, though, it was Johnny’s head on Jake’s chest, Jake murmuring things that didn’t always make sense, Johnny clinging to him like a frightened child. His grief was a sea, coming in waves that sometimes left him gagging and sometimes awash with saltwater and sometimes gasping for air. 

He talked, describing the raid in details that painted a picture in shattered, stained glass. He broke Jake’s heart when he told how he’d been grateful that Jake wasn’t home and had a chance to make it through. 

He confessed his guilt like a penitent, baring his sins one by one. He told about his time with the batarians, the training they were put through, the way they broke his spirit one snap at a time so that by the time he was transferred to Cerberus, he was so fractured that he couldn’t fight back. 

He curled into a ball on top of Jake with his head digging against his sternum as he told the stories of his scars, how they’d open him up and poke around, peel his skin back and examine, leave nothing unturned in their search for more and bigger and stronger eezo nodules, tattooing the pattern of them on his skin to keep track, and all while he was awake and strapped down on those horrible bloodstained chairs. If Jake hadn’t already decided to kill TIM, that alone would have been enough. He was going to tear Cerberus down brick by fucking brick. 

He purged a decade and a half of grief and pain like lancing a boil. When he was emptied of it, he lay weakly on Jake, tears streaming quietly down his cheeks. 

Jake stroked his hair, his lips pressed to his head, and whispered again and again, “I love you, Johnny. I’m here. You're not alone anymore. I love you.”

“Show me,” Johnny finally whispered raggedly. “Like the last time.”

The last time they’d been together before the raid, Johnny had asked for them to go slow and be gentle. He’d called it lovemaking and been embarrassed at the term. And in the middle of it, he’d asked Jake to marry him. 

Jake rolled him over onto his back, kissing a line from his scalp to the spot behind his ear that made him suck in a breath. Keeping their bodies together, he moved lower, licking along his collarbone and savoring his tremble. His fingers traced the scar on his chest and his lips followed, trying to soothe away the memory of the pain. A fine tremor ran through Johnny, another tear tracking down his temple and into his ear.

“You’re beautiful,” Jake whispered. “I love everything about you, _moya solnishka_. I’ve loved you since your ears were too big for your head and your legs were too long for your body. I love you now when you’ve grown into yourself and you carry the scars of what you’ve survived. You are _alive_ , my love, and that…” Now his own tears welled, threatening to choke him. He pressed his lips to the _Falcon_ tattoo on Johnny’s chest while he wrangled them back down. “That is _everything_ to me. I hate your scars because they remind you of pain, but I love them because they’re part of you and I love every part of you, even the bits you think are ugly.”

Johnny tilted his head back, covering his face with a hand. “Fuck, Jakey. You say shit like that, and I think I’m okay and then I just can’t even breathe. What did I ever do to deserve you?” 

“I don’t deserve you, baby,” he said, continuing his journey, determined to place his lips on every mark and scar. 

His hands smoothed over Johnny’s side, gentle but firm enough not to tickle, and he flicked his tongue in his belly button before following the lines to his hipbones. His hand stroked over Johnny’s hip and ass, down his thigh, to the spot behind his knee. Johnny’s leg drew up, his length hardening fully. Dew glistened on the tip, and Jake licked it off. He kissed down the inside of his thigh to his knee, flicking his tongue over the spot Johnny liked. Johnny’s guttural moan made heat rupture in his belly. 

“Fucking hell, Jakey, I want to be in you. Or you in me. I don’t care. I just need you,” Johnny groaned. 

“Not yet,” Jake said, kissing up his body again. 

The idea of topping Johnny for the first time was alluring. He’d offered before, but Jake liked bottoming to him too much to take up on it, and he’d been afraid he’d do it wrong if he topped. He wasn’t worried about that now, but he wanted to recapture what they’d lost, not risk Johnny wondering if he was thinking about other people. He’d been waiting for more than a decade for this. There was only room for the two of them in this bed. 

His lips whispered over Johnny’s. “Name the time and place, and I’m there. I’m yours. I love you, _solnishka_. Always and forever,” he said, repeating the promise he’d made to him back when they’d believed they had all the time in the world. 

“Really?” Johnny asked hopefully. “Still? After everything?”

“Always and forever,” he reiterated. “No matter what.”

Johnny’s breath caught on a sob. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed their foreheads together. “Marry me. Right now. You’re the captain, right? You can officiate.” 

Jake chuckled softly, stroking a hand over his hair and retrieving the lube from his nightstand. Their lips brushed over each other. “I don’t think it works like that, but Anderson can do it. Hell, anybody but a batarian or hanar. We will, love. As soon as we can.”

“Still hate Blasto, I see,” Johnny said on a gasp as Jake lowered himself onto him. “Ohhhh, god…”

Johnny’s arms banded around him, holding them close enough to share a breath. Their bodies moved together as one, their moans mingling, the friction of himself against Johnny’s belly enough to leave him struggling to keep it slow but never wanting it to end. The years melted away in their kiss. Even when need drove him deeper and left them panting, they clung to each other, letting their release wash over them together. 

Johnny was the first to speak. “What if things go wrong on Haestrom?”

“I will let the galaxy burn before I leave your side,” Jake vowed. 

“And if we survive all this?” Johnny asked. “What then?”

Jake lifted his head, looking down at him. “I don’t care. As long as we’re together, we can be pirates, we can be Alliance, we can go to college, we can go home. I don’t care if we’re in fucking Andromeda as long as we’re together and free.”

Johnny swallowed hard and whispered, “Would you really go home with me?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. It won’t be the same.”

“I know,” Johnny said. “But things will look right again. Even if it’s not Felicity. I miss pink sky and silver grass. I miss the desert and the fields. I miss _food_ that tastes right. I miss being able to kneel down by a stream and drink from it, swimming in ponds, and even the horses. I want to go _home_. I want to coach football and adopt kids and have goats like we planned. Please, Jake, will you do that with me?”

Jake kissed him fiercely, wrapping his arms around him to hug him. “I was afraid I would be the one to have to ask for that. I didn’t think you’d ever want to, though.”

“I don’t know if I could handle Felicity,” Johnny said. “I want to go back. When we’re stronger. But I don’t know if I could…” his voice wavered, “...could walk down streets Dad drove down, or past the ballfield where we played or the store where we worked...and know that it’s just us left. That it’s m-my fault.” Another sob escaped him.

“Oh, baby, it’s not your fault,” Jake sighed, feeling him soften and slip out. 

He pressed his lips to Johnny’s forehead, a tear slipping from his eye and running down his nose to land in Johnny’s hair. 

He said gently, “You wouldn’t recognize it, sweetheart. I went back once. The landmarks aren’t there anymore. The school is the only thing in the same place, and even that is a new building. It’s not the Felicity we grew up in. It’s smaller. There aren’t a whole lot of people who want to live there. Colonial affairs is paying people to go there, but they’re still in the recolonization phase. Which means that we’d be able to get in on the ground levels of rebuilding if you wanted, but we could do that anywhere. We don’t have to decide right now, but you’re not allowed to blame yourself. It’s Cerberus’ fault. Not yours.”

“Okay,” Johnny said softly. “Just don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going anywhere, love,” he promised.

Johnny nodded and rolled them onto their sides, curling into him with their arms around each other. He blinked sleepily a few times before pressing his lips to Jake’s chest and heaving a deep sigh. The tension gradually seeped out of him and his breathing evened. 

Jake stroked his short hair and glanced up through the skylight over the bed at the stars. They didn’t make him feel so far from home anymore. Home was right here in his arms. Different, but still enough that for the first time since Johnny stopped responding to his messages, he wanted to wake up in the morning.


	9. Rescue

If I ever run too far, and when the pieces come unglued

The mess of me will always need the best of you

Every morning by your side, just one look at you sometimes

You don't even know you're coming to the rescue.

-“Rescue” by Hunter Hayes

* * *

“...Now all krogan bear the genophage, our reward, our curse. It is a fight where the only goal is survival!” 

Jake laughed and put his back to Johnny’s in the center of the platform near the keystone, looking out for the next target. Varren. Klixen. This was target practice. The krogan had built it up into something bigger than what it was. 

Then the ground began to shake. His laughter faded. His heart dropped into his stomach and then tried for a frantic escape. There was nowhere to hide Johnny. 

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck,” he muttered under his breath, casting about for some form of cover. 

A tentacle stabbed up through the ground, waving around. Grunt shot at it, but Jake knew better than to waste his time with that. He shoved Johnny behind a pillar and covered his body with his own as the creature ruptured through the ground. Bile burned the back of his throat at the acrid scent of the acid that spattered where they’d stood. 

Grunt’s manic laughter and Johnny’s attempts to focus him barely penetrated the fog of absolute, unyielding terror. He was back on Akuze, listening to the dying screams of his teammates as they were being eaten alive, watching his men melt like candlewax, feeling the sudden sickening ease with which Seth’s body moved with him as he was ripped in half. 

Johnny was going to die. He was going to have to watch Johnny die. He couldn’t. He couldn’t handle it. He should have brought anyone else in the fucking galaxy. These were krogan; of course they’d come up with something insane. He should have known better than to let Johnny get within a hundred light years of this planet. 

“Jake!” Johnny’s shout finally registered. “It’s moving!” 

Jake yanked him to the other side of the pillar and shoved him up against it with a terse “Don’t. Move.” 

These _were_ krogan, and he’d come loaded for fucking bear. He unsnapped the Cain from his back and knelt down beside the pillar as the maw shot up again, towering over him. Its head jerked, working the acid up into its gullet. The Cain charged with a whine. The maw reared back. The Cain fired. Jake rolled behind the pillar, plastering himself to Johnny. The world exploded into white. 

Grunt roared triumphantly. Meat rained down from the sky, plopping around them. Jake stared at Johnny without really seeing him. All he could see was Johnny’s face superimposed onto Seth’s mutilated body. His breath caught in his chest, and he turned and heaved. 

“Hey. Easy, baby. You did it. It’s dead. We’re safe.”

He sleepwalked through the festivities and back onto the ship. Outside, he was cool, calm, and collected. Inside, he was screaming, reliving every moment of Akuze with Johnny in Seth’s place. In his mind, Johnny died a thousand deaths from Mindoir to Akuze to Tuchanka. It was his head that exploded against the window of the bus, not Dustin’s. It was his dead, rheumy eyes that stared up at him in the gore-spattered hallway, not Will’s. It was his legs the thresher maw devoured. The acid didn’t miss them, and he disintegrated in Jake’s hands. 

By the time he made it into the cabin, he was shaking so hard he couldn’t unclasp the seals on the armor he hadn’t bothered to strip out of. Johnny did it for him, but when Johnny tried to reassure him, he found himself as mute as he had been the first months with Seth. He couldn’t see the man standing alive and well in front of him. He could only see the boy he’d lost for so long. 

Johnny removed his armor almost reverently, placing his weapons in the locker with it, and led him into the shower. He stood under the spray, still trembling even when Johnny’s arms wrapped around him and held him tight. He let Johnny wash him and then dry him and lead him to the bed like he had for him after Pragia. He might have been a grown man, a decorated military commander, but in this moment, he was a child again, standing in a strange room in a place that wasn’t home and never would be. 

So many people had died on Akuze. He could still hear them begging him to save them. People he’d been joking with only a few hours before. People he’d worked with for long enough they could read each other’s minds in the field. Fathers and mothers, sisters and sons, husbands and girlfriends. Gone. In a matter of hours. He couldn’t save them.

Just like he couldn’t save Dustin or Ronnie, Jameson or Jess, Will or Maxine. Just like he couldn’t save Johnny. He couldn’t save anyone. He could just lie there in the dark and watch them die, again and again. The soldier on Mindoir had been wrong. Going into that house hadn’t been enough. A part of him had never left that place. A part of him still stood on the sidewalk outside his home with black smoke clouding the pale pink sky and the scent of violent death and rot carrying from the barn on the breeze. 

“I know you miss him,” Johnny said softly, running his fingers through his hair. “For a long time, I thought you were dead. It was the worst time of my life.”

Jake looked up at Johnny. He thought this was about Seth? Of course he did. He shook his head and tapped Johnny’s chest. _You. I thought I’d lost you._

“I’m right here,” he said, taking Jake’s face in his hands and looking down at him. “You saved me, Jakey-baby.”

The words were like an earthquake beneath the dam he’d been constructing for over a decade. His defenses cracked and shattered. Years of pain and tears surged to the surface, breaking over him like a tidal wave. His shoulders shook on a sob, and then all the tears he’d been holding back because they’d never end once they started gushed from his eyes. He buried his face in Johnny’s neck and cried the way he’d been afraid to since the raid.

“I was so fucking scared,” he gasped. “The sirens were screaming and the radio said there were ships over Felicity and then you stopped answering. I wanted to run for you, but they found us. They shot them. Everyone. They died. I still see them die when I try to sleep. I feel Ronnie bleed out on top of me. My best friends my whole life, and they all died, and I couldn’t get to you. I knew I was too late. I knew, and I couldn’t make myself move. 

“And then I did, and it was like walking through hell. Everything was on fire. Houses. People. Dogs. They burned them on the ball field. Our ball field. They shot them where they ran. Kids, little kids. The shop was on fire. Rinia. Gone. And Mat. I saw her. She had no _face_ , Johnny. She was sitting at the table with her bottle and her head down like she’d passed out, and when I raised her head, her fucking face was _gone_! I hated her, but she was still my mother.”

Johnny crooned soothingly, rubbing his hands up and down his back while the words he’d never spoken poured from him. He described the terrible trek through town, the shots that had taken him down. Johnny’s fingers found the trio of scars, and he kissed his temple again and again. He told about the three days he’d lain on the sidewalk in front of the house, the last person alive in the world. 

“You have no idea, J, what that’s like. To literally be all alone in the world, to know that everything you’ve ever known is gone. To be the only person left alive on the whole planet, dying alone with the sun burning your skin and begging it to fucking hurry because you can _smell_ your family _rotting_ inside the house _,_ and you know everyone you love is already dead.”

“But we’re not,” Johnny said. “I’m still here. We survived it, and we’re together. Everything that came between was...there aren’t words for it. But we made it. You’ll never be alone again, Jakey-baby.”

“I saw them,” he said. “I went in.”

“I know,” Johnny whispered. “Tell me...if you need to, you can tell me.”

Jake buried his face deeper in the crook of his neck. “I don’t have to. You already know.”

“Yeah,” Johnny sighed, wrapping his arms tighter around Jake.

“Going to Earth was...awful. It was so fucking awful. Too loud. Too crowded. Too neon. Too blue. It stinks. It’s hard to breathe because of all the smog. And everywhere I went, strangers. Going from knowing everyone to knowing nothing...it was like lying there again after being shot. All alone in the world. I _hated_ it. Seth was the only thing that made it even tolerable, and even then, I still hated it. If I never go back to Earth, I will lose nothing.”

“Then we won’t go back,” Johnny said. 

“I wanna go home,” Jake said tremulously. 

“We will,” Johnny promised. “We’ll make a new home there. It’s going to be okay, baby. We’ll make it okay.” 


	10. Skyfall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Where you go I go. What you see I see.

Put your hand in my hand and we'll stand.

Let the sky fall.

When it crumbles, we will stand tall, face it all together.

-“Skyfall” by Adele

* * *

Jake looked up at the hiss of the door opening. Johnny walked into their room carrying a bottle and a determined smile. Jake was sure he was going to drag him away from the datapads he’d been poring over for the past two days since they’d decided they were ready to install the Reaper IFF and go through the Omega 4 relay. 

It wasn’t just the Collector base they had to be ready for. As soon as they made it back, they were going to hit the Illusive Man’s base. They were as ready as they could be for that as well. They had Miranda’s support and Jacob’s. EDI was unshackled and on their side. She’d provided them with all the intel she had. Liara, in her role as the new Shadow Broker, had located Cerberus’ base. The ship and team were ready, even with the loss of the crew. 

Mordin and Chakwas had removed the control chip from Johnny’s head. Miranda had been working with him to reverse Cerberus’ brainwashing. She hadn’t been able to undo it yet, but she’d managed to insert a few instructions of her own that would short-circuit any attempts by Cerberus to use their code words to activate him. He would never be fully safe until it was gone, but Johnny slept easier now that he no longer feared that EDI would patch TIM in with instructions to kill Jake in his sleep. 

It didn’t feel like he would ever be ready to do this, though. What if he made it and Johnny didn’t? What if they got through all this only to lose in the end? He needed to be ready for anything. 

“You can look at that data until we’re crawling up the Collectors’ asses and you won’t be any more ready than you are now,” Johnny said. “You’ll just be tired. You need to rest.”

Jake nodded at the bottle. “Rest is what you have in mind, hm?”

Johnny held it up before pouring them each a glass. “Just one to calm the nerves. Look, if you don’t want it, I’ll sit down and shut up and let you do your Commander Shepard thing. I don’t know how you usually prep for shit like this. But I want to be here for you. If these might be our last hours together, I am going to spend them with you.”

Jake put down the datapad and went to him. “When you put it that way…” He took a glass and tossed it back. “I’m all yours.”

“Good,” Johnny said, drawing him back to the bed. “Lie down and make plans with me.”

“That didn’t work out very well last time,” Jake pointed out but stretched out beside him anyway and laid his head on Johnny’s chest.

“You say that like we can’t still do it,” Johnny said, slowly running his fingers up and down Jake’s arm. “We were going to graduate, go to college, get married, and move back home and raise goats and kids. We’ve done some of those things. Cerberus had me finish high school. So it’s not quite the order we planned. Whatever. I can still go to college. I’ll do it over the extranet.”

“I could always go back,” Jake offered. “We could do it together. I went for psychology because I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me. That helps my current career some, but it won’t do me much good as a farmer. What do you want to do?”

“Engineering,” Johnny said. “I want to create a raid-proof settlement.”

The words kicked Jake in the chest. He nodded, wrapping an arm around Johnny’s trim waist. 

“I like that. It’s good. I’ll help. It’ll need defenses, bunkers, shit like that. I can work strategy with you.”

Johnny nodded. “Thought you might. Needs to be cost-effective, too, so companies will actually implement it instead of deciding to take the risk and pay off if they lose.”

“I like this dream,” Jake said. “I want to build it in Felicity. We were conceived and born there. It’s still small enough we could make it like what it was but better. Moving forward, not letting go. That’s what I used to tell myself when I was afraid I was getting too far from home. Since we’ve been talking about going back, I’ve been afraid of getting too close to home. But I  _ want _ to, too.”

“I need a little time to get used to the idea,” Johnny said, “but where you go, I go. Even if that’s Felicity.”

Jake said softly, “If we never go back, they win. I don’t want them to win.”

“Fuck ‘em,” Johnny said. “You wanna go home, we go home.”

Jake rose onto his elbow and dipped his head, kissing him softly. “I love you, Johnny Shepard.”

“I love you, too, Jake Shepard.” 

Johnny rolled him onto his back and slowly stripped him of his uniform. Jake helped him out of his, pressing soft kisses onto his lips and jaw, flicking his tongue behind his ear, and nibbling along his collarbone. Their hands roamed each other’s skin, rememorizing every plane and curve and divot. Jake traced the lines of Johnny’s tattoos, and Johnny kissed the one over his heart. His mouth slipped lower, outlining Jake’s abs with his tongue, playfully licking his belly button, and following the trail of hair below it. 

Jake’s head tipped back as Johnny licked the bead on his piercing and drew his foreskin down to expose his crown. Johnny’s lips were warm and soft around him, his mouth hot and wet. He slowly pressed a lubed finger into him, drawing a choked moan from Jake. He wanted to be closer to him, to feel Johnny’s body against his, but when he tried to shift to take Johnny into his mouth, he was stopped with a hand on his belly. 

Johnny worked a second finger into him, crossing them and twisting slowly. The sensation had always driven Jake mad with need, and this time was no different. His legs fell apart, his hands fisting in the sheets and Johnny’s sable hair. A third finger joined them, stretching him almost wide enough to take Johnny with ease. He panted, shallowly rocking his hips to ride his twisting fingers. 

“More?” Johnny asked, gently grazing his teeth down his shaft.

“Oh, fuck!” Jake gasped, his hips jerking. “Yes. Please, more.”  He would give Johnny anything, allow him anything he wanted. 

“Size queen,” Johnny said around him with a smile.

“I want  you  in  me ,” Jake moaned, moving shallowly on him. “I want you to fucking  _ rail  _ me.” 

“Fuck, yeah,” Johnny hissed, swallowing him down again and easing his fingers out. He wiped them clean on a towel by the bed before crawling up Jake’s body and kissing him hard.  His other hand buried in Jake’s hair, tugging his head back, and he lined himself up with Jake’s entrance. “I’m going to fuck you until the whole world goes black, Jakey-baby, and all you can see is me.”

“That’s every time,” Jake said against his lips, wrapping his legs around Johnny’s hips. “All I ever see is you.”

“Sweet-talker,” Johnny murmured.

His hips snapped forward, burying himself in him in a single smooth stroke. Jake expected him to fuck him into the bulkhead, but Johnny controlled his movements, keeping them slow and steady. His eyes bored into Jake’s. Stars wreathed his head like a halo. Jake forgot the mission, forgot his fear, forgot the years they’d spent apart. 

There was only here and now. There was only heat building in his belly as Johnny’s tip slid over his spot and his hand stroked in tandem. There was only the two of them. Jake and Johnny, Johnny and Jake, as it had always been. For a time, he could believe it would always be. 

His fingers dug into Johnny’s broad shoulders. His breath came in uneven pants. Johnny kissed him deep and slow, eyes open, and wrapped his arms around him to meld their bodies together until Jake couldn’t tell where Johnny ended and he began. Every thrust seated Johnny inside him. Each one brought a strangled cry from their throats. The heat built, converging into a pinpoint before going supernova. He tightened around Johnny, spurting hot onto their bellies, and felt Johnny stiffen in response. 

They lay together in the aftermath, breathing heavily and clinging to each other, neither wanting to let the other go. Jake nuzzled into Johnny’s neck, hoping that time would just stop. His eyes drifted closed, and he slid into sleep with his head on Johnny’s shoulder. When they woke, it would be showtime. But for these last moments, they could rest easy together before the sky fell.


	11. War

When I thought that I fought this war alone, you were there by my side on the front-line

and we fought to believe the impossible.

When I thought that I fought this war alone, we were one with our destinies entwined.

-“War” by Poets of the Fall

* * *

Everything that could go wrong did. Jake lost track of the times he was certain they’d come across an insurmountable problem and all was doomed. But the ship did exactly what it was built to do. The team he’d built did exactly what they were trained to do. And in the end, he got to give the Illusive Man a giant finger when he blew the base to smithereens. 

No one died. When Johnny pulled him into the _Normandy_ and they raced back to the relay, he was convinced he was about to be faced with a casualty list, but EDI informed him that they hadn’t lost a man. The suicide mission, ironically, was the first mission he’d run where everyone lived.

Their plan to head directly to the Illusive Man’s base was thwarted by the need to stop at Omega for repairs to the ship, but that also allowed them to resupply and formulate a plan using what they’d learned on the Collector base. 

Jake wanted to blow the station. Garrus and Zaeed built another bomb using parts Tali acquired. But it did no good to cut the head off the snake if it could grow another one. They had to be certain TIM was on board, dead, and that EDI could wipe their records. Which meant they needed EDI on the inside. 

Six hours after Jake postulated this, Kasumi appeared on board with a mech she’d acquired. EDI wasn’t impressed with its capabilities, but she connected to it anyway and prepared to join them. Like the Collector base, this was going to be a full-team mission. Jake had gotten Hackett’s agreement to send a small fleet to fight with them. It met them at the relay. 

“What did you have to do to get this?” Johnny asked.

Jake checked his ammunition block and said, “You’re not going to like it.”

“Just tell me,” Johnny said.

“Infiltrate a batarian prison and rescue an undercover Alliance operative,” Jake said sheepishly.

“You’re fucking shitting me,” Johnny said flatly. “You’re taking us into a batarian prison.”

“Infiltrate,” Jake reiterated. “Meaning I’m going alone.”

“Like hell you are,” Johnny said. “Call them off. Call this whole fucking mission off. If that’s the price you have to pay, it’s too high. You’re not doing that.”

Jake leaned in and said, “First, this isn’t just about you. They destroyed my home, too. Second, I’m a Spectre. Sometimes I have to solo dangerous missions. You want me to retire, I will. After I go to Bahak. Hell, nobody wants to listen to me about the Reapers anyway, and there’s an initiative going to Andromeda soon. You want to go make a totally new home, I will do that. But I am going to take down Cerberus first.”

“Jake…” Johnny’s eyes pleaded with him. 

“I know,” he said. “Trust me, I do not want to be separated from you for something like that. But I also know that there is no force in this world strong enough for me to expose you to the risk of being captured by those freaks again.”

“But I’m supposed to let you?” Johnny countered.

“It’s my job.” 

“This isn’t a job. This isn’t necessary. You don’t work for them anymore!” Johnny scowled at him, biotics flickering over his skin.

Jake looked around the shuttle bay where the others were studiously avoiding them and back at Johnny. “Please trust me, _solnishka_. Let me do this, and we will ride off into the Mindoir sunset together and never look back.” 

Johnny huffed, his brow furrowing, and bumped his forehead to Jake’s. “You better fucking come back. We have plans.”

“Yeah, we do.”

The Alliance ships and the _Normandy_ kept the Cerberus fleet engaged while the team infiltrated the station. They divided into three teams led by Jake, Garrus, and Miranda. EDI accompanied Jake and Johnny through a path they carved through the center of the station with a Cerberus fighter ship while Garrus and Miranda created a diversion along the side passages. It was slow going, and the Illusive Man threw everything he had at them to slow them down, but they eventually reached his command center. 

To Jake’s surprise, he hadn’t run. The Illusive Man himself waited for them, backdropped by a familiar sun, stars glittering off the gleaming black expanse beneath their feet. Jake stopped on the pad for the projector where his image had stood dozens of times before, and jabbed a finger at him. 

“You’ve got a lot to answer for, Harper.”

The Illusive Man tapped his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray by his hand and stood, the ice in his glass clinking musically. He strolled over to Jake, lacking even a hint of fear. Fury twisted his lips. 

“You should be thanking me!” Harper said. “Without me, you would be dead. Without me, your little fucktoy would still be with the batarians.”

“Without you, we would still be on Mindoir!” Jake shouted. 

“Nobodies!” TIM spat. “Farmers! Useless! Hell, you’d both probably be in the belly of the Collector base right now, and who would have saved you?”

Johnny stepped up beside him. “That doesn’t justify what you’ve done.”

Harper narrowed his cybernetic eyes on them. “So you’ve come to kill me, have you?”

Jake snarled, “I’ve never met anyone who deserved it more.”

Harper took a sip of his drink and gave them a sardonic smile. “Yes, well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint. It won’t be me dying today, Commander. Take him down, John Lucas. Protocol 927 umbrella.”

Johnny’s eyes glazed. He took a step toward Jake but stopped, shaking his head. Jake turned to face him. Johnny drew his weapon, and Jake found himself staring down the barrel of a gun held by the person he loved most in the galaxy. Jake lowered his weapon. 

Faith, yes, but even if he didn’t have it, he wouldn’t be the one to end Johnny. Not after he’d spent half his life searching for him. Another step and Johnny clutched his hair, bending at the waist and muttering to himself. The pistol clattered to the deck, and Jake kicked it away. 

He motioned for EDI to cover the Illusive Man so that he could focus on Johnny and said, “It’s okay, _solnishka_. I trust you. You can fight this.”

“Jakey,” he whispered to himself. “My Jakey-baby.”

“That’s right, Picard,” Jake said, crouching down in front of him. Johnny threw out a hand to ward him off, but Jake caught it, bringing it to his heart. “Yours. Always and forever.”

Tormented silver eyes met his. Johnny’s mouth twisted in agony. Jake leaned forward, pressing their foreheads together and clasping the back of Johnny’s head. 

“I love you, _solnishka._ Stay with me. Don’t leave me again.”

“Help me,” Johnny begged brokenly. “Can’t…don’t know how long I can fight it.” His hand wrapped around Jake’s wrist, squeezing tightly. “Love you, Jakey. Fuck, I love you.”

“I know.” Jake pressed his lips firmly to Johnny’s forehead before getting to his feet again and cracking his knuckles, his attention returning to the Illusive Man. “You fucked up. I haven’t let anybody hurt Johnny since I was fifteen, and I’m not going to start now, asshole.”

Without waiting for a response, he charged. 


	12. Slow Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm behind on posting and the last chapter was short, so y'all get two this time. ;) NSFW

Slow hands like sweat dripping down our dirty laundry.

No chance that I'm leaving here without you on me.

I already know that there ain't no stoppin' your plans and those slow hands.

-“Slow Hands” by Niall Horan

* * *

Johnny was going to kill him. 

Jake raced across the asteroid toward the waiting ship. The relay grew behind it, dominating space itself as they hurtled toward it. The airlock slid open, and he leapt into his lover’s waiting arms. Johnny held him tightly, trembling, before jerking away and turning abruptly. 

He didn’t have time to wonder at his reaction. Running for the CIC, he threw himself up the steps to the galaxy map. He’d taken gut punches that didn’t hit as hard as the sight of the Bahak System turning red and blinking out. His head hung between his hands, and he gasped for air. All those people….

“I tried to warn them,” he whispered. “I tried.”

“They’re just batarians,” Johnny said coldly. “Good riddance.”

He shoved away from the rail and spun to face his boyfriend. “‘Just batarians’? Fuck, Johnny, you should know better than anyone that’s not true! How many people just like you were enslaved there? How many humans, asari, turians, drell? I guaran-damn-tee you someone else’s Johnny was on that fucking planet, _solnishka_ , and _I killed them_!”

“We don’t need to talk about this here,” Johnny said, taking his hand and pulling him to the elevator.

Johnny was on him the moment the doors to the lift closed behind them. Jake turned to say something to him, but the words died on his lips when Johnny pinned his hands over his head and kissed him hard, pushing a thigh between his legs and popping the seals on his armor. They stumbled into the cabin, shedding armor and clothing in a trail behind them. When Jake would have gone to the bed, Johnny pushed him up against the fish tank instead. 

“You still loose enough from last time?” he asked. 

His teeth grazed down Jake’s throat. His hand wrapped around Jake’s length and stroked, exposing the tip to his thumb. Jake’s hips jerked, thrusting into his hand. He nodded, too assaulted by sensation to form coherent sentences. 

“Good.” Johnny pivoted, pushing him toward the desk. 

He swept aside datapads and a picture frame with himself in it, and bent Jake over, hooking a hand under his thigh and bringing it up onto the desk. The position was vulnerable, open, one he’d never try with anyone else. With Johnny, though, it was hot, exciting, dirty. Johnny’s slick tip circled him, pressing steadily into him. 

“I’m going to fuck you raw, Jakey-baby, and then we’re going to switch places and I’m going to become the last person you ever stick your dick in,” Johnny said against his ear. His hand splayed over Jake’s chest and slid up to wrap around his throat.

“ _Da, ser_ ,” Jake panted, pushing back onto him to take him deeper. Johnny kept it slow but inexorable, not letting him go fast enough to cause pain but steady enough to let him feel that delicious stretch as he filled him. “Fuck me. Please. Fuck me hard, Johnny.”

Johnny’s groin met Jake’s ass with a quick, hard thrust. Jake’s triumphant cry drew a dark chuckle from his partner. “Someday, I’m going to see just how much you can take, you filthy fucking size queen.” A playful smack accompanied his words, making Jake moan. 

Johnny began thrusting in earnest, driving into him hard and fast. Jake put a hand against the display case to keep his head from ramming into it and moved with him. The case beside them reflected them in the glass. His mouth went dry at the sight of Johnny’s firm body pounding into him. Moisture beaded around his piercing, dripping onto the deck at his feet. His dick ached to be touched, but he’d go if he did, and Johnny never allowed him to finish until he’d given permission. It was a level of control Jake was happy to give him. 

Johnny’s breath grew ragged, his rhythm beginning to falter. “I’m gonna come in your ass, baby. Watch. Watch and I’ll make you come.”

Jake’s knee threatened to buckle, but Johnny’s arm wrapped around his waist, holding him up. He took him in hand, stroking fast, short strokes that bordered on too much and left him begging mindlessly. In the glass, he could see Johnny’s head down, watching directly as he moved inside him. His hips snapped, his ass tensing, and he leaned forward and bit down hard enough to mark even Jake’s enhanced skin. His fingers plucked at the piercing, sending lightning bolts racing through his body. Jake tensed, tightening around Johnny’s thick length, and spurted out onto the deck. 

“So fucking good,” Johnny groaned, dropping his head to Jake’s back. “You feel fucking perfect, baby. Can’t wait to feel that piercing of yours in me. Never gotten fucked with a PA before.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to be one of your firsts before,” Jake said, trying to catch his breath. 

Johnny lifted his head and looked at him incredulously. “Are you kidding? First love. Only love, really, so you get first and last there. First time in my bed. First time in public. Behind the dugout. First time on a spaceship. First time giving oral. First time getting caught. First guy I told Mom about. First guy to give me a pet name.” He nuzzled behind Jake’s ear. “We’ve got a lot of firsts, Jakey-baby, and we’ll make more.” 

“Yeah, we will,” he said, leaning into it. 

Johnny eased Jake’s leg down off the desk, rubbing the stiffness out of it. “We’re together again. You’re mine. And in case you were wondering, I don’t share.”

Jake turned to face him, sliding his arms around his waist. “You know, Seth and I were never exclusive. I didn’t think it was fair to ask him to be with just me when I was still stuck on you. It never bothered me when he was with other guys. But I think about you standing like this with someone else, and…” Dark energy swirled to the surface, crawling over his skin. “I couldn’t handle it. Not for a second.”

“Good,” Johnny said, tugging him down into the sleeping area and over to the bed. “I’m yours, Jakey. Heart, body, soul.” 

“Me, too, _solnishka_.”

Their lips meshed. Heated skin met, still slick from their exertions. Jake walked him back, lowering him down when his knees hit the bed. Johnny went easily, letting him have at least the illusion of control. Jake cleaned him before retrieving the lube and kissing down his body. He nipped and nuzzled his skin as he hooked one of Johnny’s thighs over his shoulder. His lover watched him through heavy-lidded eyes, breathing heavily. 

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Johnny said.

The back of his neck heated at the compliment, and he grinned somewhat shyly. He’d never gotten used to Johnny’s descriptions of him. His lubed finger stroked Johnny’s cleft, finding his tight hole and circling it slowly. Keeping his eyes on Johnny’s, he took him into his mouth, sucking him to full hardness. 

Johnny moaned, rocking his hips. His entrance flexed against Jake’s finger, attempting to draw him in. Jake obliged him, letting Johnny’s body set the pace. Using his hands and mouth, he drove him up, savoring the novelty that came with exploring places in his partner he never had before. 

“Jake, fuck, quit teasing and fuck me, damn it,” Johnny moaned, fisting a hand in his hair and tugging him up. 

Jake laughed, letting himself be pulled down for a kiss. He wrapped a hand around himself and rubbed the piercing against Johnny, letting him feel the bead at the tip. Johnny moaned again, rolling them over and straddling him. He took Jake’s hands in one of his and pinned them over his head. 

“You take too long,” Johnny grunted. “You’re killin’ me, smalls.”

Johnny guided Jake’s tip into him and sank down onto him. His head fell back as he slowly lowered himself. Jake fought to remain still. Johnny’s body was tight and hot enough to burn, silk and liquid fire, massaging him with each gradual downward thrust. He gasped for air, his hips rocking shallowly, and strained against Johnny’s hand around his wrists. 

He’d never been taken like this before. When he topped, he was in charge. He’d never given up control to anyone but Johnny. But now, Johnny was taking it, taking his pleasure on Jake, and he feared he wasn’t going to last ten seconds when Johnny really started moving. 

For someone who’d complained about Jake going too slow, Johnny took his sweet time. He moved like he wanted to feel every single millimeter of Jake’s body inside him. Precum dripped from Johnny’s tip in a slender strand. His pulse pounded in his throat. His eyes, turned up to the ceiling, were thin grey-green rings around a wide, dark center. Dark energy flowed over his skin. _He_ was beautiful. And _he_ was the one killing Jake.

“Fuck me, Johnny, hurry,” he panted, trembling with the need to move.

“No.” Johnny continued his slow trek downward. 

Jake gripped the pillow beneath his head, gasping with each inch he sank into the other man. Johnny’s name fell from his lips like a prayer. He writhed, drunk with the need to move. Johnny’s ass met his groin, and it took every ounce of self-control he possessed not to buck wildly up into him. Johnny’s legs banded around his hips, holding him still. His hand tightened on Jake’s wrist, his gaze sharpening on Jake’s face. 

“You’re impatient,” he said in a low, threatening voice. “You almost made it hard to enjoy that piercing of yours sliding up inside me. But since I love watching you lose control, I think I’ll forgive you.” 

Jake thought he thanked him for that, but he couldn’t be sure. Johnny’s ass flexed around him, stroking him without moving, and it was making him insane. His heels raked against the mattress. His back arched up between the points at which he was pinned. He tried to beg, but there wasn’t enough breath left in his lungs to get a sound out. Johnny watched him hungrily, dragging his lower lip between his teeth as he flexed rhythmically. Jake’s hips left the bed, but Johnny stayed locked around him and the friction he sought didn’t come. 

“Holy fuck,” Jake keened. “Fuck me, Johnny. Ride me. _Please_ …. Anything, I’ll do anything you want, just let me fuck you.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Johnny said huskily, releasing his hold with his legs and letting him move. 

Jake drove up into him, lost in the heat of him. Their fingers linked, clinging to each other. Dark energy swirled around them. His heels dug into the mattress.

Johnny moaned, his head falling back. He moved with Jake, milking him with his body. Johnny trembled, leaking hot fluid onto Jake’s belly. 

“Fuck, Jake. Just like that. God, yes,” Johnny groaned. “Harder, baby. Fuck me harder.”

Jake rolled, flipping Johnny onto his back, and kissed him hard as he slammed into him. Johnny tensed for an instant before melting into him. His legs wrapped around Jake’s waist, his tongue hot and hungry against Jake’s. Their moans mingled into one voice, rising through the room until Johnny shouted his name, tensing and spurting molten ropes against Jake’s skin. He clamped around him in a hot, silken vice, and Jake emptied himself in him. 

He dropped onto Johnny’s chest, trembling, and wrapped himself around him as a wave of emotion slammed into him. He didn’t know if he was laughing or crying or both. The years washed over him, an eternity and mere moments. 

Later, they lay in the dark, their fingers twined together, watching the stars. Johnny said huskily, “What the hell happened out there? I was so afraid for you, Jakey. I’ve never been so afraid in my life.”

Jake sighed. “Kenson was indoctrinated. She sent the entire damn base after me. I got knocked out for two days.”  
“Why?” Johnny asked.

“She had proof the Reapers were coming. That’s why I blew up the relay. If I hadn’t, the Reapers would be invading the galaxy right now. They’re _here_ , Johnny.”

“Shit,” Johnny muttered. “Guess our Mindoir plans are on hold, then.”

Jake raised his head from its spot on Johnny’s chest and looked him in the eye. “I wasn’t kidding about Andromeda. Say the word and I get them on the comm right now. We could be Pathfinders. I wouldn’t be the only N7 or Spectre there. We could find worlds without batarians, without Reapers. A new start. A new Mindoir.”

“That isn’t your dream,” Johnny said. “It’s not mine, either. We don’t run, Jakey-baby. We’re going home. We just have to stop the Reapers first.”

Jake dipped his head and ghosted his lips over Johnny’s. “Okay. Then there’s something we need to do.”


	13. I Belong to You

If I could be honest here at the altar, I refuse to grow older unless it's with you.

I fell in love and made you a promise, though I'd never noticed how much it meant to you.

Yes they can see us, but only at a glance. 

Only you know the man that I am beyond the surface.

I belong with you. When they let us choose, I will say I do.

-“I Belong to You” by Jacob Lee

* * *

The wedding wasn’t the one they’d imagined back on Mindoir, dreaming late into the night. Hannah didn’t cry over her boys. Thomas didn’t stand quietly off to the side with his chest out with pride. Maxine didn’t rib on them until they flushed red and told her to shut up and then hug them. Will wasn’t dreaming about his wedding to Erin. Ronnie and Dustin and Jameson and Boone weren’t there to be their best men. Coach Talley didn’t officiate. 

Dr. Chakwas straightened their bowties and gave them both a misty-eyed smile. Hackett stood tall in his dress blues. Tali joked about wearing her best belts and showing off her new purple hood. She and Garrus stood with Jake. Gabby and Ken stepped up for Johnny. He’d come up out of his hole and spent most of his time with them when he wasn’t with Jake. Admiral Anderson officiated. 

Jake paced his side of the Presidium garden, raking his hands through his dark hair enough times that Chakwas started smacking his shoulder and insisted on smoothing it out so he didn’t look like he’d rolled out of bed and put on a tux by accident. He had no reason to be nervous, but he’d been wanting this since he was sixteen years old and a part of him was convinced that the Reapers were going to come streaming through the Citadel relay and take Johnny from him in the next five minutes. 

“Hurry up,” he muttered to no one in particular. “What’s taking so long?” 

“Guests are sitting down,” Chakwas said. 

“What guests?” he asked. “We didn’t invite anyone. No one knows about this but us. The fucking press better not be here. This isn’t for them. They can fuck off.”

“Not the press,” Chakwas said. “The crew. Liara. A couple I don’t recognize. The Council. And Udina.” She added the last under her breath. 

Jake went to her, peering over her head between a pair of bushes. Sure enough, Udina was sitting on a little white chair. At least he’d had the grace to sit in the back, though this was guaranteed to be nothing but a diplomatic duty in his book. The rest of the Council sat nearby. They hadn’t divided the seats into sides. Jake remembered from graduation how much it had hurt to look out and know that no one was there for him. He didn’t want that reminder for Johnny, even though none of those in the crowd knew him. He was about to turn away when a petite blonde woman turned her head and he froze. 

Mrs. Hayworth. And the man beside her, an image of Seth had he lived twenty more years. Mr. Hayworth. 

“What the…?” 

He hadn’t spoken to them since Seth’s funeral. He hadn’t wanted to see them then. He hadn’t wanted to go. He’d wanted to get shitfaced and eat a bullet. The fucking casket was going to be closed anyway. It wasn’t like Seth would know. But he’d dragged himself out, taken one fucking minute after the other, and then found the nearest bar and given himself alcohol poisoning and spent the night in the hospital. He could barely remember any of it. 

“Don’t freak out,” Johnny said from behind him. “I invited them. I explained that we’d been reunited, and while you wished it could have been Seth, they were still the closest to family you had left, and it would honor you if they were willing to attend. And I paid their way.”

“Why?” Jake asked. 

“Because they care about you,” Johnny said. “His mom cried. She said she felt like she’d lost two sons when she lost Seth, and after losing their daughter, it almost killed them, but they understood that it was too painful to see them. They want to be part of your life, Jakey. Why not let them?”

“Because I lose everyone I love, and it hurts too much,” he said. “ _Hannah_ was my mom. _Thomas_ was my dad. Mr. and Mrs. Hayworth are nice people, and I cared about them, but they’re not my family.”

“They could be,” Johnny said, slipping an arm around his waist. “Mom and Dad would say that family is meant to grow and adding to it takes nothing from the ones already there. While I don’t think I could have applied that principle to Seth himself, I don’t see why we can’t apply that to his family. Look, if it’s too much, I’ll ask them to leave.”

“No,” Jake said. “No, it’s...you’re so fucking good to me, _solnishka_.”

Johnny leaned closer, tipping his head against Jake’s and looking out at them. “Is that what Seth looked like?” 

“A younger version, yeah,” Jake said. “More hair. Down to his shoulders before the Alliance. Giant teddy bear like his dad. Do you really want to hear about that on our wedding day?”

Johnny shrugged. “I’m the one you’re marrying today, like it was always supposed to be. But you cared about him, and he was there for you when I couldn’t be. I think I can afford to be gracious. Tell me about him.”

Jake rested his head on Johnny’s shoulder, taking a deep breath. “When I first met him, I couldn’t talk. Traumatic response, my shrink later told me. Too much to say and nobody to say it to. I was lying in bed with your hat, wishing I’d died in front of the house, and he told me about his sister. Said it helped him to break the day down into bite size pieces and plan them out. So he did. He took this interminable future I couldn’t breathe in front of, and he made it manageable. Every day for the next several months until gradually, we started planning a full day or a weekend or a week. And then we slowly started planning longer. 

“It wasn’t until we were looking graduation in the face, though, that he finally asked me to plan for a year or more. The Alliance. College. Commission. All steps, he pointed out, that gave me more power to find you. He sat with me when he burned popcorn and I couldn’t stop throwing up. He forgave me when I freaked out and didn’t talk to him for weeks after our first time together because I felt like I’d cheated on you. He offered to use his own money to help me hire the Shadow Broker.”

Johnny gave his waist a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad you had him.”

“I wouldn’t be standing here if I hadn’t,” he said. “First anniversary of the raid, I’d gotten my amp. I hacked the pain pump. He found me.”

“Oh. Well. Then I’m _very_ glad you had him,” Johnny said dryly. “Okay, no more sad talk.” He turned to face him, cupping his jaw in his hands. “This is our day. We’ve waited fifteen years for it. We get to be happy today. Everyone who loved us would be happy today. If they’re somehow looking down at us, we’re going to give them a reason to smile. Got it?”

“ _Da, ser, moya solnishka,_ ” he chuckled. 

The Presidium gardens contained a plant from every colonized world belonging to a Council race. Jake hadn’t known that until Anderson explained it to him. Mindoir’s was one of their smooth, gray-barked trees with crimson and gold leaves. For the event, Anderson had convinced the Council to shift the sky projected above them from blue to pink. It wasn’t exact, but it was close enough to have taken their breath away when they’d arrived.

They walked down the aisle together, neither willing to let the other go. Jake was certain Johnny shared his secret fear that something would come along to tear them apart. He nodded at the Hayworths and realized he didn’t have to force a smile because he was already beaming. They stopped beneath the Mindoirian tree where Anderson waited and turned to face each other, their hands gripping tightly. 

He’d never seen Johnny so beautiful. It wasn’t just the tux or that his hair had started growing out again and almost looked like it had in high school. It wasn’t the clean-shaven lines of his jaw. As always, it was in his eyes. Silver-green today, like they had been the day he’d met him, sparkling like the day he’d first agreed to marry him. The grief they carried around them like a matching pair of shrouds had fallen away, and his face was lit with joy. 

Jake’s heart swelled, warming in a way he hadn’t felt in longer than he could remember. Happiness. He’d forgotten what it felt like. 

“Do you, Jacob Sullivan Shepard, take John Lucas Shepard to be your lawfully wedded husband, to honor and cherish for better or worse, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, till death do you part?”

“And beyond,” Jake said. 

“Do you, John Lucas Shepard, take Jacob Sullivan Shepard to be your lawfully wedded husband…” The words blurred together as Johnny squeezed his hands and gave him a smile that made the station fall away. 

“I do,” Johnny said. 

Tali passed the ring to him, a white-gold band inlaid with a brilliant strip of rainbow ore mined on Mindoir. He, Commander Shepard, with the steadiest hands in the business, almost dropped the most important object he’d ever hold but caught himself at the last moment. Johnny winked and grinned at him. 

He cleared his throat and said, “We were just kids when we fell in love. I promised to walk through hell for you, not knowing how literally I would have to keep that promise. We promised each other forever, not knowing even what the next day held for us. That was fifteen years ago. Death has parted us and brought us together and done it again throughout our lives. 

“That’s why I don’t promise ‘till death do us part.’ I promise that no matter what the universe throws at us, I will love you. I promise that no matter what you have done or what we learn even if it shakes us to our very foundations, I will love you. I promise that no matter what you might do in the future, I will love you. There is nothing that will make me stop. So I promise you that as long as there is a sun shining in any sky over any world, I will love you, _moya solnishka_.”

Moisture gleamed in Johnny’s eyes. His hands tightened on Jake’s hands before he released them and turned to accept the matching ring from Ken. His fingers trembled as he slipped it onto Jake’s hand. 

“You’ve always been better with words than I am, but I’ve had fifteen years to work on this, so I hope I can at least do that justice.” He took a deep breath, looking in Jake’s eyes. “The first time I told you I loved you, I could see that you didn’t believe it. Not because you didn’t believe me, but because you didn’t believe anyone could love you. It blew my mind because you are the most lovable person I’ve ever known. People have always been drawn to you. Our friends at school, our family, your foster family, your crew. You have this innate ability to make people feel like they’ve come home when they’re around you. 

“Which is why no matter where we go from here, no matter how many light years we travel, no matter what planet or space station or ship we live on, no matter which stars decorate our night sky, you are my home. You are the air that I breathe, and I promise you that as long as I draw breath, I will be yours. Forever and always, Jakey-baby, I will love you.” 

He didn’t wait to be told he could. Jake pulled Johnny into his arms, holding him and not letting him go even when people rose to their feet and began clapping. Their lips met on a breath, their eyes locking, and delved into each other. Johnny’s tongue swept into his mouth, possessing it slowly, thoroughly. He took another first, the first kiss with his husband, and claimed all of his lasts in doing so. Johnny’s lips curved into a smile he could feel, one that made his heart sing.

They were breathless when they finally broke apart and pressed their foreheads together in another, silent declaration. People were coming up to congratulate them and thankfully seemed amused that they could barely take their eyes off each other. He let go of Johnny only when the Hayworths came forward. 

Mrs. Hayworth took his hands in hers, tears shimmering in her bright eyes. “I am _so_ happy for you, Jake. When you first came to live with us, I thought ‘now there’s a child who looks like he will never smile again.’ You were so deeply sad, and I had no idea how to make it better. Watching you slowly emerge from your shell and become a boy again brought me so much happiness. 

“When we lost Seth, the light you’d reclaimed died again, and it broke my heart. But looking at the two of you together, it’s like all the pain has finally faded away and I can see the boy you were before we knew you. It’s a sight to behold, sweetheart.” Her chin trembled and a tear dangled from her lashes, but she smiled brightly, holding her hands up to their faces. “If Seth could give you a message, you know what it would be.” 

“Now, _this_ calls for a celebration,” they said together. 

“Thank you,” Jake said hoarsely. “For your blessing. For your kindness to me. For opening your homes and hearts to me when I was too broken to accept it. You guys were great. You went above and beyond, and I don’t think I showed you enough how much I appreciated it.”

Mr. Hayworth stepped up behind his wife and smiled kindly. “You two are welcome in our home any time you’d like. You can’t replace our kids, and we can’t replace your parents, but we’d like to still be family.”

Jake nodded and let himself be pulled into a hug. “I’d like that.”

After the guests left, Jake took Johnny by the hand and led him through the Presidium. Johnny gave him a curious look and said, “You didn’t have to get a hotel, if that’s where we’re going. I like the cabin. Could use some fish for that tank, but it’s just fine for what I have in mind.”

“Oh, we’re going back to the cabin,” Jake assured him. “And EDI’s going to lock the door while I do really, really bad things with you.”

Johnny hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “The lift to the docks is that way.”

“I know. We need sustenance first. Trust me when I say really, _really_ bad things with you. We aren’t sleeping for at least a full day cycle.” He led him into a small restaurant with only a dozen candlelit tables and pulled out a chair for him. “You’re going to want some food in your belly.”

“Alright, what’ve they got?” Johnny asked, taking his seat and reaching for the kiosk. 

Jake swiped it before he could take it and turned it so he couldn’t see. “Let me.” 

“What? I put a ring on it and now you think you’re the boss?” Johnny teased. 

Jake winked at him. “Just trust me.” 

A few minutes later, a server came over with a tray laden with food. He’d ordered an array of dishes, all staples. Johnny’s eyes widened at the sight of purple pasta and bread, yellow legumes, green sauces, goat’s milk, and strips of meat from a hooved animal native to Mindoir. 

“Home,” he gasped. “This is from _home_.”

Jake nodded. “I found it a week before Sovereign hit the Citadel. It was the first thing I checked on after the battle. I used to eat here every time we came in for shore leave. I’ve been planning to bring you, but I wanted it to be special.”

Johnny took a bite of a mashed root vegetable like potatoes and groaned in delight. “This tastes almost like Mom made it.” He tried the pasta next, and his eyes flew to Jake’s. “This tastes just like _you_ used to make it. Best. Wedding. Present. Ever!”

“It’s not exact—” he began.

Johnny cut him off with a shake of his head. “Sweetheart, stop. You keep saying that. Stop. It wouldn’t be exactly the same now even if we’d never left. Things would have changed. The town would have expanded. New things would have come in. Old things would have gone away. People would have moved out and moved in and had kids, and Mom would have started using a little less salt and a little more herb, and you’d have learned a new way to throw the sauce together, and we never would have worried about making sure things were exactly the same. We’d have grown with it, so we wouldn’t even have noticed. 

“I don’t expect things to be the same. I just want them to be good, and I want them to be with you. So I don’t care that the grass today was the wrong color or that they didn’t quite get our favorite shade of sky or that this _almost_ tastes like Mom’s. I care that we got married under a Mindoirian willow beneath a pink sky with our friends around us and now we’re eating food that finally, finally tastes right. I am _happy_ , Jakey-baby.”

“Me, too,” Jake said, relaxing in his chair and reaching for his hand. “I have everything I could ask for right in front of me.” 

Johnny’s ring finger stroked the ring on Jake’s. “About fucking time,” he said. “I’d kinda hoped they’d try to send you away when we were kids so we’d have an excuse to elope. I knew you’d have your choice of partners when we left Felicity, and I wanted to get a ring on your finger before they had a chance. I knew we were too young, but even back then, I also knew you were my forever.”

“I’m just sorry it took so long,” Jake said, linking fingers with him.

His husband. His forever. It would never, ever be long enough.


	14. Epilogue: Safe and Sound

I remember tears streaming down your face when I said, I’ll never let you go

When all those shadows almost killed your light.

I remember you said, “Don’t leave me here alone.”

But all that’s dead and gone and passed tonight.

Just close your eyes. The sun is going down.

You’ll be alright. No one can hurt you now.

Come morning light, you and I’ll be safe and sound.

-“Safe and Sound” by Taylor Swift

* * *

Johnny looked down at hands that had held baseballs and shotguns, reins of horses and the reins of the best ship in the galaxy, and his husband’s hand through the years from fourteen to forty-one to one hundred and forty. Hands that had once been smooth and then calloused and then arthritic and were now crooked and spotted with age. Thin blue lines crept ant-tracks between the gnarled, protruding bones. 

Easier to think about the hands themselves than the folded blue and white flag that rested in them. Easier to think about the past than the empty days to come. Easier to keep his head down than acknowledge the one thing in the galaxy that he couldn’t face. 

He had to, though. This one final time, he had to face his nightmare. Only there were no arms to hold him in the dark anymore. No bright grey eyes gone rheumy with age, no sly, mischievous smirk to see him through. There was only him now. Him, and the thousands of people who’d come from all over the galaxy to say goodbye to the man who’d saved them all. 

He turned, passing the flag to a tearful Miranda, her hair silvered with age but her face still youthful in spite of the lines that were beginning to form. She took it reverently, safeguarding it for him. EDI’s touch was unsurprisingly gentle as she helped him stand and slowly make his way to the podium. Liara, as fresh-faced now as the day he’d met her, reached out and brushed a hand along his arm as they passed by. He looked out at the gathered crowd, picking out the faces of friends who’d accompanied them through the years. 

The casket loomed beside him, the familiar and terrible memorial behind him. Surrounding it were trappings befitting the hero who lay inside. He was being sent off with full honors, of course. 

Johnny wrapped his hands around the edge of the podium, gripping tightly enough to send pain radiating up his arm. He welcomed it, fighting to bring the words from his aching chest through the burning plasma in his throat and the jaw that had locked tight. 

He’d never been any good at speeches. Jake was the one who could rally a field. Johnny had been the one at his six, a force to be reckoned with in his own right during his heyday, to be sure, but content to let Jake take the lead. In most areas, at least.

He cleared his throat, propping his cane against the podium and rubbing a hand across his chest. “All of you are familiar with the legend. Many of you knew the man. To some of you, he was Commander Shepard. To others, just Shepard. To some lucky few, he was Shep. To me, though, he was Jake. My husband, my best friend, the man I’ve loved since we were children. We spent more than a century together, went through hell and saved the world together. We laughed and we fought and we loved as hard as we could. We _lived_. A hell of a life.

“I met Jake Shepard just a few miles from here. His mother worked for my father. We went to school together. We spent two of the best years of our lives roaming these streets. Probably won’t surprise some of you that we were somewhat rebellious.” 

He chuckled wetly, catching the knowing smiles spattered through the crowd. “Even then, he showed signs of the man he would become. Jake was the one we all came to when we needed help, whether it be an extra set of hands unloading hay in the barn or saving you from a pounding—usually by giving it to the one who’d threatened it. He was tough, loyal and responsible, brave. Funny, too, once you got to know him. 

“We lost...everything here. Everything but each other. It changed him. Made him harder. Made him a little colder. But he still kept that spark that drew people to him. That never changed. 

“We saw a lot of things together. Good times and bad. Historic times and mundane ones. He was...my world. And the galaxy is a darker place without him. But now...now he’s come home to rest alongside our brother Will and sister Maxine, our mother Hannah, and the memory of our father, Thomas. He was the hope for a galaxy. He more than fulfilled it. And now, he can rest.” 

He paused, trembling, and rubbed his chest again, trying to ease the pain of the sucking wound that couldn’t be seen. “I’m sorry. I...that’s all I can say.”

EDI moved in again and took him by the arm, guiding him past the casket that held what remained of everything he loved. She sat him down in his chair, and Miranda passed the flag back to him. The ceremony droned on, but his part was done. He had nothing left but what little reserve he could draw upon to steel himself for watching his entire world be lowered into the dirt. Grief wrapped around him, threatening to crush him. 

The soldiers lined up at the front shouldered their weapons, aiming into the air. 

_BANG!_ The pressure in his chest increased. His jaw clenched so tightly he thought it might shatter. He didn’t know how he could go on without him. He hadn’t slept in two days, unable to face their large, empty bed. He hadn’t spent a night without Jake beside him in more than a century. What’s more, he didn’t want to. What was life when the best part of it was gone? He’d lived a full and fulfilling one. And now he just wanted to go home. 

_BANG!_ His vision blurred, a single tear trailing down a wrinkled cheek, tracing the hills and valleys time had carved. Cold sweat broke out over his forehead and down his back. 

Was this how Jake had felt when he’d been missing? He was _ready_ to go, nothing holding him back but a stubborn body that hadn’t yet realized it had outlived its use. 

Home wasn’t a planet or a space station, a condo or a house, a building or a stable location. Home was gray eyes and a strong jaw, arms that had been strong enough to hold him right up to the end, a heartbeat beneath a broad chest, a quick wit and a sharp mind that hadn’t dulled with age. Home was the man who’d saved him from a fate worse than death. 

_BANG!_ Images raced across his mind, snapshots frozen in time. Jake, with dark energy dancing over his skin. Jake, tugging at his ballcap. Jake, trembling beneath him their first time on the couch. Jake, curled into him in the dark. Jake, facing down a thresher maw, his biotics blazing even as acid chewed into his back. Jake clinging to him as they limped forward together to destroy the Crucible and end the Reapers. 

Running across battlefields, standing at the helm of the _Normandy_ , standing in the kitchen cooking breakfast, enticing him into bed with an alluring grin. Jake, with his head thrown back in laughter, with his back beginning to stoop, with his fingers twisting but still fitting solidly with Johnny’s. Jake, over and over again, always and forever from childhood to old age, Jake. 

The pressure in his chest turned to pain, doubling him over and stealing his breath. This wasn’t grief, not in its entirety. His vision condensed to a single point, and he felt Miranda’s hand on his back. 

Her frantic “Shepard! Shepard? _John_?” came to him as if from a distance. 

He looked up, taking in the sight of his homeworld for what would be the last time. It was different, unrecognizable from the town he’d grown up in, but still his. His eyes locked on the casket, washed in the pink sky his Jake had always loved so much, as his breath failed and peace settled over him. 

_Wait for me, my love. I’m coming home to you...._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. Let me just say. You guys. I love you. Jake's story is probably in my top three favorites I've ever written. It's been an emotional journey for me, too (yes, I absolutely did cry writing this and many other parts of this saga), and while it didn't get huge amounts of attention, it got you, and you guys have been engaged and supportive and you've loved my boy like I do, and I wouldn't trade you for a thousand kudos. Thank you for going on this ride with me and sticking through to the end. <3


End file.
